


Know You're Not Alone

by K_R_Closson



Series: Settle Down, It'll All Be Clear [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen, Rule 63 Clint Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:05:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_R_Closson/pseuds/K_R_Closson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Agent Barton babysitting Tony Stark leads to her accidentally launching the Avengers Initiative. Or, the one where Clara Barton recruits all the Avengers without realizing she’s doing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clara’s numb when she goes to HR to turn over her bow, her quiver, and her ID. She’s still numb when she goes to her quarters to pack. The only weapons she owns that don’t belong to SHIELD are the bow she brought with her from the circus and the knife she used to kill Barney.

The knife stays her in her boot.

The bow and old quiver she retrieves from its hiding place and carefully packs into her duffel bag. 

She doesn’t know what she’s going to do.

She hasn’t lived anywhere but SHIELD for almost 10 years. This is her home. She doesn’t - what does Fury expect from her?

She mechanically packs, leaving behind anything with a SHIELD logo. It means her wardrobe is mostly spandex and tourist t-shirts, proclaiming her love of DC and NY and every other city she’s been to that had a tourist shop.

She gets her battered copy of  _ Greater New England Fish & Wildlife _ from her bookshelf. Maybe she’ll rent a cabin somewhere. She has the money for it, and maybe what she needs is a vacation. Fresh air, no one to bother her, and -

Nothing to do but think.

No.

She flips through the book, thumbing old postcards, the places she dreamed were home when she was a kid. She gets to the SHIELD brochure and moves right past it. There are pictures from missions, and she lingers over the farmhouse in Belarus. She doesn’t think about Sasha often, doesn’t think about the life Natasha tried to offer her.

Clara misses Natasha so much it hurts.

Natasha would know what to do right now.

She’d hold Clara close and help her forget.

She’d -

It doesn’t matter. She’s not here.

It’s just Clara.

She flips the page.

At the end of the book is the card that came with her edible arrangement. A private number for Tony. A promise to help her if she needs it.

She doesn’t have a cell phone, she had to turn it in with her other stuff, but she knows where she can find Stark. Not Malibu, she’s not ready to go back there, but he has a New York office. Maybe he’s there.

She puts her book carefully in her bag.

New York City it is.

If Tony Stark is there then that’s good.

And if he’s not, well, she survived almost a year in New York alone when she was 17. She’s sure she can manage three months now that she’s nearing 30.

~*~

She drives straight through to New York, windows down, music blasting. She spends the trip alternating between singing along to the radio and cussing out the other drivers on the road. It’s oddly cathartic.

She’s not an SI employee so she has to park in the parking garage across the street, but Tony, fortunately, likes to plaster his name across his buildings so Stark Tower is easy to find.

Finding Tony on the other hand…

“All I want to know is if Mr. Stark is in his New York office,” Clara tells the receptionist who could quite possibly play poker with Natasha and hold her own.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asks.

“Do you have a phone?” Clara counters.

The receptionist’s smile doesn’t waver. “Mr. Stark is a very busy man. You should try scheduling an appointment.”

Clara’s about two seconds from doing something she’ll regret, so she takes a deep breath and goes to the little waiting area. Tearing up the gossip magazines in the magazine holder feels good, but it doesn’t get her any closer to figuring out if Tony is here. It’s probably her luck that he isn’t.

She’s not sure what she’ll do if he’s in Malibu. 

Maybe she will go back to Belarus.

“He’s a hard man to get a meeting with.”

Clara looks up to see a gangly teenager plop down on one of the armchairs. He sits sideways, legs hanging over one of the armrests. There’s a skateboard propped up next to him that explains the windblown hair.

The kid grins and sticks out a hand. “Peter Parker.”

Clara eyes it, wary, but shakes it. “Clara Barton.”

“I’ve got a phone,” the kid says, pulling an outdated flip phone out of his pocket. “Uh, this isn’t blackmail or anything, but if you do get a meeting, put in a good word?”

Clara takes the phone. “You couldn’t blackmail me if you tried.” She punches in the phone number Tony gave her. “Peter Parker, you said your name was?”

He nods. “Yeah, but uh, maybe don’t mention that?”

Clara narrows her eyes at him.

He holds his hands up quick. “I’m just a photographer. I’m not trying to get company secrets or anything, I swear. I just want a picture. Kid’s gotta make a living, you know?”

Clara does know. The phone’s still ringing so she pulls it back to look at it. It’s several years old, scuffed on the sides like it’s been dropped a fair number of times, and a strip of duct tape is all that’s holding the battery in.

The kid’s not as bad off as she was when she was here, but he’s still a kid. 

“Hello? How’d you get this number?” Tony’s voice demands.

Clara puts the phone to her ear. “You gave it to me,” she tells him. “Had to take the phone off some kid in your lobby, because your receptionist is irritatingly good at her job.”

There’s a beat of silence then, “Hawkeye?”

“You can call me Clara,” she says. “You don’t happen to be in New York, do you?”

“You in trouble?” he asks.

“Kind of.”

“Yeah, I’m in New York,” he says. “You said something about my receptionist? Are you at the Tower?”

“I am.”

“I’ll tell Janice to let you up. You can tell me what’s going on.”

Clara looks over at the kid who’s doing his best not to look like he’s trying to listen in on the conversation. He pushes his glasses further up his nose and offers her a skittish smile.

“Tell Janice I’ve got a plus-one.”

Peter’s eyes light up, and he almost faceplants as he scrambles to his feet.

“Bringing me friends?” Tony asks, amused.

“Repaying a favor,” she says. 

She snaps the phone shut and puts it in her pocket.

“Hey,” Peter says.

“You can have it back after Stark wipes his number from your phone,” Clara tells him. 

She hefts her duffel over her shoulder - no way was she leaving it in a New York parking garage - and goes back to the reception desk, Peter trailing behind her. 

Janice is scowling as they approach.

“Should’ve just let me go the first time I asked,” Clara says.

She hands over two visitor passes. “12th floor,” she says.

Peter doesn’t speak, she’s not even sure he breathes, until they get into the elevator.

“Best day ever,” he tells her, punching the 12 button. He loops his ID around his neck and doesn’t stop tracing the big V. “Tony Stark’s like a genius. Total level of his own.”

A fanboy, Clara thinks, as the kid starts rattling off his favorite inventions. At least it’s better than elevator music. 

An intern meets them at the 12th floor. 

“Stay in the elevator,” the boy says. He gets in with them and scans his ID before pressing an even higher number.

He rides with them all the way up to their floor, which turns out to be the penthouse suite. It’s like Malibu except smaller. And there’s some sort of ramp on the balcony. She wonders if that’s a new addition because of Iron Man. 

The kid’s bouncing on his toes next to her, and before she can tell him to calm the fuck down, Tony wanders into the living room and the kid actually  _ squeaks _ . 

Clara’s embarrassed on his behalf.

“Clara, you -” Tony trails off when he spots the kid. “Aw, hell.”

“It’s such an honor to meet you,” Peter says, words exploding out of him. He scurries forward like he wants to shake Tony’s hand, but comes to an abrupt halt when Tony takes a step back. “You’re a  _ genius _ . I mean, you obviously know that, but wow, it’s so cool to be in the same space as you. We’re breathing the same air right now.”

“You brought me a stalker,” Tony says, giving Clara a betrayed look.

She shrugs. “Janice wouldn’t let me use her phone.”

“Kid,” Tony’s eyes narrow. “I know you.”

Peter’s eyes go even wider and he stumbles backwards, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah. Awkward.”

“You’re the kid with the camera.”

“Photographer,” Peter says. “But, uh, I’m sure you know that word so you’re trying to make a point.”

“You’re pretty sharp yourself,” Tony says, cutting, and Clara watches as Peter’s shoulders droop.

“Tony,” she says. 

“You sounded like Pepper just then,” he tells her. “Do you two practice that? How to sound disappointed in one easy step - saying my name.”

Clara stares at him, even, refusing to let him distract her.

Tony sighs. “Alright, camera kid. You can have one shot.  _ One _ .” He looks over at Clara. “You know he makes his money taking embarrassing pictures of me?”

Clara looks over Peter’s ratty jeans and the chewed collar of his shirt. “Then how come he isn’t wandering around in Armani?”

“Ha ha,” Tony says. He looks over at Peter. “Well, kid? How do you want me? Beer in hand? Spaghetti sauce dribbling down my shirt?”

Peter’s shrunk into himself, all of his boundless energy just...gone. Clara doesn’t like it. 

“I take real pictures,” Peter says, subdued, “but no one wants to buy those ones. I have some pretty good ones of Iron Man if you want them.”

“And you couldn’t work at the Quick-E mart like everyone else your age?” Tony asks.

Peter blanches. “Nah,” he says. “Look, forget about it. Sorry I bothered you.”

Last time Clara saw someone looking that dejected, she got drunk with him and got herself suspended from her job. It doesn’t stop her from crossing her arms over her chest and giving Tony a significant look.

“You don’t seem like you’re into drugs,” Tony says.

Peter shakes his head. 

Tony squints, assessing. “College fund?”

“Too soon to worry about that. Hoping for a scholarship.”

“Kid,” Tony says. “Are you really going to make me stand here and guess?”

“It’s Peter,” he says. “And it’s medical bills. My uncle. Tried to stop an armed robbery at the local Quick-E mart.”

It’s Tony’s turn to wince. “I’m an asshole. Which, I’m sure you know as one of my many stalkers.”

Peter shrugs.

“Alright,” Tony says. “You said you’ve got a few pictures of Iron Man?”

Peter’s hesitantly lifts his head.

“There’s some new Times Magazine article coming out about me. Send me your five best pictures, and I’ll tell them your pictures gets in or they don’t get to run the article.”

Peter’s mouth falls open.

“You don’t know how to do things by halves,” Clara says.

“Okay,” Peter says, eager, before his face falls again. Clara’s forgotten how expressive normal people are. “Does this mean no more pictures for  _ The Bugle _ ?”

“I’m not going to deny you your only source of income,” Tony says, “Just, no more pictures with Ms. Potts in them. She didn’t get asked to get sucked into this mess.”

Peter nods. “I can do that. I’m really good at cropping people out of pictures.”

Tony wanders over to the bar and rummages around until he comes back with a business card. He hands it over. “Email the pictures to that address.”

“Thanks,” Peter says, taking the card and backing up towards the elevator. “This means a lot. And, I wasn’t sucking up before. You’re totally a genius. I’ve read everything you’ve written. Really cool, man.”

“Stalker,” Tony says, but it’s fond.

“Oh,” Clara says as he backs into the elevator. She pulls the phone out of her pocket. “You should wipe your number from his phone before I give it back to him.”

Tony makes a face at the battered phone. “Kid,” he tells Peter. “I’m not touching that. And if you use that number to call me, I will find where you go to high school and make your last however many years a living hell.”

Clara tosses Peter the phone. He fumbles it and it clatters on the floor. 

“Can’t be worse than it already is,” Peter says, oddly cheerful as he scoops up his phone. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And Peter?” Tony says. “If you ever have an emergency you don’t know how to get out of,” Tony nods at the phone, “you know how to reach me.”

The elevators close but not before they see the mix of awe and disbelief in his eyes. 

“He’s never going to leave you alone,” Clara says. “You just turned low-key stalking into hero worship.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Tony asks. “I’m the modern superhero. It’s about time I start getting worshipped for it.”

Clara rolls her eyes. “Because an adoring following is exactly what your ego needs.”

“Mostly what Iron Man has gotten me is way more meetings with US Generals than I wanted. I had to sit down with the Department of Defense and Department of State yesterday. They felt the need to explain that as a US citizen anything I do on foreign soil counts as American action. I know not to start an international incident. How come people always remember the billionaire and playboy part but not the genius?”

“I’m surprised they haven’t tried to force you to start mass creating the suits.”

“They have,” Tony says. “They’ve tried to confiscate the one I have, too. It’s almost like they didn’t pay attention when I explained that the suit only works with an arc reactor, and the only miniaturized arc reactor in existence is keeping me alive so they can’t have it.”

“I’m sure telling the US government no is the highlight of your day,” Clara says.

“It’s definitely up there,” he says. “But enough about me. I’m surprised you showed up. Not that you aren’t welcome, because you are, but when you didn’t call me the first week, I figured you never would.”

“Took me a while to get out of medical,” she says. She’s still gripping the handles of her bag like she’s waiting for him to tell her to get out. “And then I went on a mission before I was ready, and I screwed it up. I’ve got three months of vacation. Which is a long time so if you don’t want me here, I can find somewhere else to go.”

He doesn’t mention that if she’s coming to him then she doesn’t have anywhere else to go, which just means that Tony Stark is kinder than he wants people to believe.

“Plenty of space in the Tower,” Tony tells her. “You want to take a real vacation or do you want me to find something for you to do?”

“You don’t need to entertain me,” Clara says. 

She’ll find something to do.

~*~

She doesn’t.

She’s never had down time before, never taken a vacation, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. At SHIELD, there was Coulson to bother, or a shooting range to occupy, or people to pester if she was really desperate.

Here, there’s nothing like that.

Sure she does a bit of training, but Stark Tower isn’t a military agency, it’s not outfitted like SHIELD was. And the people she knows here, Tony and Pepper, are busy with their actual jobs. She feels guilty taking up their time when they’ve already done so much by giving her a place to stay.

On her third day in New York, she takes a trip to Mama Vigliano’s. It’s weird to go in the front door, weird to look at the checkered tablecloths and red vinyl booths. She feels like an imposter even though she’s in jeans and an I <3 NY t-shirt and has money in her pocket.

There’s a teenager behind the counter who probably wasn’t even in school the last time Clara was here.

“What can I get for you?” the girl asks.

Clara’s about to give her order when a piece of paper taped to the counter catches her attention. It’s a flyer advertising a community celebration of Mama Vigliano’s life. Clara goes cold inside.

“Oh,” the girl says. “You didn’t know?”

The birth and death dates are on the flyer. Clara doesn’t know why this is hitting her so hard. It’s not like she knew the woman. She actually went out of her way to avoid her, afraid of getting hit like the other kids in the alley did.

“Been out of town,” Clara says. “Uh, I’ll get take a large cheese pizza.”

“Did you know her?” the girl asks.

Clara shakes her head. “Not really.”

“It’s hit the community pretty hard,” the girl says. “You should come to the celebration. They’ve already had the wake and the funeral, but that was for family, you know? This is for everyone.”

Clara hands over her money and then goes to wait by the refrigerator that’s stocked with soda. When she gets her pizza, she finds a bench to eat it on. She only manages a few pieces, and then circles back to the shop to put the rest of it in the dumpster. She doesn’t wait around to see if anyone’s going to go looking for it.

~*~

When she gets back to the Tower, Tony and Pepper are eating dinner in the penthouse. She personally thinks it’s a little strange that Tony eats with his PA, but it’s not like she ever expected Tony to be normal.

“Wow,” Tony says when she comes through the elevator. The SI pass he gave her reminds her of her SHIELD ID. “You look like someone died.”

“Tony!” Pepper hisses.

Clara shrugs. “Didn’t know her so I’m not actually sure why I’m upset.”

Tony and Pepper both stare at her.

“Wrong thing to say?” Clara guesses.

“And you tell me I’m bad at being a human being,” Tony says. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Just some pizza shop owner,” Clara says. “And she died like a week ago or something. It’s really not a big deal.”

“I tried to call you to see if you wanted Chinese,” Tony says, doing her a favor by dropping the subject. “But your phone went straight to voicemail.”

Her phone that’s shut off and sitting in a drawer alongside her bow and ID and - “It was SHIELD issue. I had to turn it in when I left.”

Tony’s staring again. “You don’t have a phone?”

“Who was I going to call? Everyone I know is at SHIELD or is so deep undercover I don’t know when I’m going to see her again.”

“Me,” Tony says. “Is that why you had to steal that kid’s phone? I’m getting you the latest Starkphone. No, don’t even try to argue with me. What if I need to call you? What if Pepper needs someone to go shopping with her?”

Clara looks over at Pepper in her fancy dress and even fancier shoes. “I’m not the person she would pick,” Clara says. 

“No wonder you’ve been bored,” Tony continues, like Clara hadn’t spoken. “You don’t even have Angry Birds to amuse you. SHIELD seriously took your phone? Did they freeze your accounts too? Do you need money?”

“I’m suspended, not a fugitive,” Clara says.

“Suspended? You said you were on leave.”

Clara shrugs. “Unpaid leave is a nice way to say suspended. I told you, I screwed up.”

“And I was being respectful and giving you space, but I’m done with that,” Tony says. “Sit down, have some beef teriyaki, and tell me what the hell happened.”

“Most of it’s classified,” Clara says, sitting down next to Pepper. 

“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Pepper says, getting Clara a plate and set of chopsticks. “Especially anything that would get you in more trouble.”

Tony looks like he’s going to protest but Pepper sticks a dumpling in his open mouth. 

“After Malibu, I needed something to do,” Clara says. “I convinced Coulson to take me on a mission before I was ready, and I got drunk with a suspect and let him escape. Honestly, a three month leave isn’t as bad as it should’ve been.”

“Excessive,” Tony declares around his dumpling. He chews until he can speak clearer. “Especially since I’m sure you left out all the details that would make you sympathetic.”

“I broke protocol,” she says. “It doesn’t matter why. And you’re biased against SHIELD.”

“And you’re biased towards it.” He nudges a couple cartons towards hers. “Anyways, I was thinking about how you have all this time, and how I haven’t done anything to make Pepper angry with me in a few days, and I’ve decided what we should do.”

“No, Tony,” Pepper says.

“You don’t even know what I’m planning,” he says.

“I don’t need to. I know you.”

Tony grabs the pork fried rice and wanders into the other room with it. When he returns, there’s bits of rice sticking to his goatee, and he’s got a piece of paper clutched in his hands. He puts it down in front of Clara. 

It’s a list of names.  _ Iron Man, The Hulk, Agent Natasha Romanov, Agent Clara Barton, Dr. Hank Pym, Dr. Reed _ and a few others.

“This doesn’t mean anything to me,” she says.

“After I told the world I was Iron Man, your friend Fury paid me a visit. Gave me this whole speech about how the world is bigger than me, and he was thinking of forming an elite team to deal with the threats we face. Responsibility, blah blah.”

Pepper and Clara give him matching looks.

“Anyways,” Tony says, “He doesn’t trust me to superhero on my own, which, fair, but he’s crazy if he thinks I trust  _ him _ with an elite force. I think we should assemble the Avengers ourselves.”

Clara laughs. And then laughs some more.

Tony looks hilariously put out.

“No,” she says.

Pepper breathes a sigh of relief.

“You’re really telling me you trust Fury with everything?” Tony asks. “He already runs a government organization that’s shadier than the CIA and reaches parts of the world most people don’t even know exists. He’s got his fingers in all the pies. I’m thinking that’s not a good idea.”

“And you leading a - what did you call it? - elite team is a better one?” Clara shakes her head. “Look, I like you. You’re smart and you’re a better guy than you want people to think, but you’re not a military commander. You have no covert training. And you already have a job.”

“You have covert training,” Tony says, “and currently don’t have a job.”

“It’s a vacation,” she says. “I’m going back to my job.”

“Fury’s secrets have secrets,” Tony says, “You can’t deny that.”

She can’t. But he’s the head of SHIELD. Of course he has secrets. Of course he doesn’t tell her things. She bets there are things he doesn’t even tell Hill or Coulson. 

“I don’t like secrets,” Tony says. “We’d have transparency.”

“There is no we,” Clara says. “There’s you trying to one-up Fury, and me trying not to lose my job. That’s not a we. That’s just two people.”

“We could get more,” Tony says. He points to the list. “Agent Romanov. You know her?”

“She’s my partner,” Clara says, and sees the moment Tony’s brain goes to the wrong place, “ _ Professional _ partner. She’s not around right now. Deep undercover.” If she was here, Clara probably wouldn’t be in the mess she was in.

“Are you guys a 2-for-1?” Tony asks.

“She’s not going to sign-up to play superhero with you,” Clara says. “She wants stability more than anything and, no offense, you flit from new thing to new thing.”

“So I need a group,” Tony says, “I need to prove we’re serious. Look, you have nothing to do for three months, and I should really get out of Pepper’s hair so she can run the business. We should go looking for some of these people.”

“No,” Pepper says.

“No,” Clara echoes.

“Not Pym,” Tony says. “I hate that guy. And not Reed. He’s just annoying. Got you covered, got Romanov. How about the Hulk?”

“No,” Clara says, sharp and immediate. Something that’s rage personified? Something that loses rational thought and just stomps around destroying everything in its path? Absolutely not. She was glad when she wasn’t put on Hulk containment when it first surfaced and even gladder when it seemed to vanish.

“Fine,” Tony says. “But if we’re not going after Reed or Pym then Fury’s going to snatch them up. That means he’ll have two doctors and we’ll just have me.” He snaps his fingers. “I know. Bruce Banner. He’s as smart as I am and in different fields which is good. The more brains the better. Plus, he’s gone on some sort of spirit journey and no one’s heard from him in years.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Clara asks.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” Tony says. “It’ll be fun, time consuming, and at the end of it the treasure will be knowledge.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Clara says.

“But you’re going to come with me,” Tony says, “because you’ve been here three days and you’re already bored.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Pepper says. “SI needs you.”

“SI needs  _ you _ ,” Tony counters. “I’ve already drawn up the paperwork naming you CEO. No one trusted me before the Iron Man thing and now it’s even worse. SI needs to be run by someone competent. And who doesn’t end up on the news for robot fighting.”

“CEO?” Pepper asks, faint. “You can’t do that. I’m your  _ PA _ .”

“You’re the best woman for the job,” Tony says. “It’ll be fine. And I’ll keep inventing things, obviously. You just get to do the boring stuff. Oh, by the way, I’m taking a three month vacation.”

Pepper looks like she’s going to stab him to death with her chopsticks.

Clara decides to slip away and let them sort this out between themselves.


	2. Chapter 2

She’s not surprised so much as annoyed when she sees Tony Stark in her kitchenette when she wakes up the next morning.

“Pepper’s first action as CEO was to sign off on three months of mental leave for me,” Tony says. “According to the paperwork I’m going to a facility to cope with the whole betrayed by my father-figure thing.”

“Really?” Clara asks. She’s surprised he’d go for that.

“She wanted me to go to some alcoholics retreat, but I refused.”

Clara looks at him.

“I know I have a problem,” he says. “I just don’t want to fix it. Now, I’m going to collect as many people for my superhero team as I can in three months. It’ll go a lot faster if you help.”

He takes a big swig from his coffee.

She grabs a banana out of the bowl of fruit. “What’s so super about Bruce Banner?”

Tony gasps and clutches his chest. “What’s special about Banner? He’s a genius. Biochemistry, nuclear physics, gamma radiation. I need him. I need a bro.”

“You’re too old to say that,” Clara says. “But what I meant is, what does he contribute that you don’t.”

“Last I heard of him, he was experimenting with gamma radiation in order to find a way to make soldiers immune to radiation poisoning. Obviously something the military is interested in. But, what if  _ we _ could figure that out. Not Ross, not the government, not anyone who would keep it secret. We could make it widely available.”

There’s hope on his face, a flicker of something she remembers from that speech he gave at MIT. She’s not going to be the one to crush it.

“I’ll help you find him,” Clara says, “but if he’s been on the run, he might not want to come in once he’s been found.”

“I’m very good at convincing people to do things,” Tony says.

And, well, Clara can’t argue with that, given the fact he’s somehow convinced her to go superhero hunting.

~*~

Clara’s packing for the trip when Pepper knocks at her door. The woman has a backpack slung over one arm and a pile of clothes in the other.

“Um,” Clara says. Then, “Come in.”

“Tony says you didn’t come with much,” Pepper says. 

She puts the backpack down on the bed and Clara investigates that first. It’s sturdy, good quality. Much better than lugging her duffel all around the world.

Still, “You don’t need to give me things,” Clara says.

“I want you to bring Tony back,” Pepper says. “I can’t build you weapons or write a tracking algorithm, but I can make sure you’ve got clothes.”

“Oh,” Clara says. “Um, thank you.”

Pepper lingers next to the bed, her fingers still resting on the pile of clothes. “I didn’t understand Mr. Stark before Afghanistan, and I’m not going to say I understand him now, but he needs to do this. For some reason, he needs it, so I’m letting him go, but please take care of him. I know he can be a pain, and usually it’s my job to look after him, but I’m going to be stuck here.”

“Hey,” Clara says, soft. “It’s going to be fine. I’m trained for this sort of thing. And Banner isn’t even being held by extremists or anything. I doubt we’ll even have to fight anyone.”

Which is good, because Clara’s circus bow isn’t really up for it. She’s bringing it anyways, because any bow is better than no bow, but it won’t be much help if they get into serious trouble.

“I tried to talk him out of bringing the suit, but he hasn’t let it out of his sight since Obadiah,” Pepper says. “Just,” she looks down at her hands, “I don’t understand what happened to him, and I hope that I never will. But maybe you understand. Help him if you can.”

Clara doesn’t point out that she wouldn’t be here if she was in any kind of shape to help anyone else. Instead she says, “Thank you,” again and lets Pepper help her pack. 

Clara’s trying to figure out what she can take out in order to make space for her bow when Tony says, “What is that?” from her doorway.

“It’s a bow,” she says, “Haven’t you ever seen Robin Hood?”

“That is not a bow,” he says. “That’s - I don’t know what it is, but it’s not anything I trust. What happened to your other one?”

“SHIELD,” she says. She pulls her bow close to her chest, oddly defensive. “This is the only one I own.”

“It looks like it would snap under even a little pressure,” Tony says.

“It’s from when I was a kid,” she says.

He stops looking like he’s going to rip it from her hands and throw it in the nearest trashcan. “I’m making you something better. You’re my protection, which means you need a real weapon.”

“You have your suit,” she reminds him, “and you don’t make weapons anymore.”

“SI doesn’t make weapons,” Tony says. “ _ I  _ still do.”

Clara doesn’t get the difference.

“Obie was selling Stark weapons to the Ten Rings, and I was almost blown up by one of my own missiles. I can’t control mass-produced weapons, so I don’t make them anymore. But a suit of armor for me or a bow for you? I know exactly whose hands those are going into.”

“Fine,” Clara says, because she’s not one to turn down an upgraded bow. “But -”

“I can make your arrows better than SHIELD,” Tony says. “Actually, I already have. No more overdose problems. Simple fix, really.”

Clara realizes she’s staring, but she can’t stop. “You’ve been messing around with arrow design?”

He shrugs. “Found your bow and stuff while we were doing clean-up around the mansion. I managed to sneak an arrow when SHIELD came collecting.”

“Right,” Clara says.

“What he’s saying,” Pepper tells her, “is that he already  _ has _ made you something better.”

“I -” Clara doesn’t know what to say.

“It folds up,” Tony says. “For easy storage and lugging about. Come on, I’ll show it to you and then we should hit the road. First stop is Willowdale, West Virginia.”

“West Virginia?” Clara asks. “Banner’s been in the US this whole time?”

“I wouldn’t need to take three months off if he was,” Tony tells her. “But Culver University is in West Virginia and that’s where Banner worked before he disappeared. We’re going to see if any of his coworkers feel chatty.”

“Are we driving?” Clara asks. “I don’t have any ID that’ll let me carry my bow on an airplane, and I don’t like checking it.”

“I’ve got a private jet,” Tony tells her. “You could bring a grenade launcher. Ooh.”

“No, Tony,” Pepper says.

“Can I fly it?” Clara asks. “I’ve got my pilot’s license. I mean, I’ve never flown a commercial aircraft, but I’ve flown plenty of military ones. Can’t be that much different.”

“Not this time,” Tony says, “We’re going to be coming up with our plan. But it’s good to know you can fly. Never know when that might come in handy.”

“No strippers on the plane,” Pepper reminds him, “and remember that you’re sending me designs while you’re on this adventure of yours. Apple’s scrambling now that you’re committing fully to the tech industry, but they’re good at what they do.”

“Strippers?” Clara asks.

Tony waves her off. “Don’t worry about it. And yes, I know this is a working vacation.”

“Now Clara knows too,” Pepper says, “Which exponentially increases the chances that you’ll get work done.”

“We’re in trouble if I’m the responsible one,” Clara says.

Tony laughs.

Pepper looks like she’s regretting every choice in her life that’s led her to this point.

~*~

The bow Tony gives her is awesome. She doesn’t have a chance to test it, but it’s lightweight, can fold up, and, according to Tony at least, still packs a good punch. As soon as they get somewhere with some open space she’s testing it out.

In the meantime, there’s an entire airplane to explore.

She shouldn’t be surprised that the main part of the plane has extensive couches and a bar, and Pepper warned her so she’s not surprised by the stripper poles either.

“Bet I can get across without touching the ground,” she says. 

She puts her pack down on one of the couches and climbs onto the bar.

“What are you doing?” Tony asks.

“Ground is lava,” she replies, leaping to the first pole. She grabs it and holds on, making sure she’s got her bearings before reaching out for the next one. She uses the poles until she’s run out of poles and then she drops down onto one of the couches.

“If this spy thing doesn’t work out for you, you should consider American Ninja Warrior,” Tony says.

“I’m an agent, not a spy,” she says. “Natasha is a spy. I’m not good at the undercover stuff. I just shoot things, really.”

“You can do a full split,” he says, “I just saw that so don’t try to lie. And you’ve got gymnastic skills. That’s more than just shooting. Did SHIELD teach you all that?”

“Nah,” Clara says.

She doesn’t elaborate and Tony doesn’t push.

He does, however, pour himself a drink from the bar.

“Want one?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “That’s how I got myself suspended.”

“Fair,” he says.

He takes his drink and sits on the couch across from her. “I did some poking around. Dr. Erik Selvig is the only staff member Banner worked with that’s still around. And we’re in luck, because he was out in New Mexico chasing aliens or something but he’s back now.”

“New Mexico?” Clara asks, forcing herself to sound casual.

“Yeah. A lot of people think he’s off his rocker because  _ aliens, _ but he’s an astrophysicist so aliens are kinda his thing. And space in general. Doesn’t matter. He’s at Culver, we’re going to Culver, maybe he has some sort of space telescope that can find Banner.”

This is a bad idea, Clara thinks.

This whole thing has been a bad idea, but it’s just gotten worse.

~*~

The head of the research department at Culver nearly falls over his feet trying to kiss Tony’s ass when Tony swaggers up to the university and then tries to keep Clara from stepping on campus. 

“She’s here to talk to Dr. Selvig,” Tony says, and the department head - Roscoe - looks at her like he wants her off his property even faster. Tony leans in towards Roscoe. “It’s a favor for a friend. Could you help me out? Let them chat for an hour and you can show me your new facility. I heard there was some kind of accident a few years ago.”

“Yes,” Roscoe says. “It was terrible. Trying to replace all the equipment has been a nightmare.”

“I can imagine,” Tony says. “Must be expensive.”

Clara can see the moment Roscoe realizes that Tony is basically a walking ATM, and then they’re both being ushered inside and Dr. Selvig is being paged. 

“You haven’t heard from Dr. Banner since the accident, have you?” Tony asks while they’re waiting for Selvig.

Roscoe’s face loses all color. “B-Banner? No. He’s gone missing. Tragedy what happened here. Lost a lot of good men that day. And the ones who did survive - they wanted to get far away. Bad memories, you know.”

“Mm,” Tony says, attention straying. 

Roscoe relaxes as soon as Tony’s looked away. Tony raises his eyebrows at Clara. She nods, because yes, she understands that something weird is going on. And she thought  _ she  _ was bad at covert ops. She wonders if there’s somewhere she can dump Tony while she tries to get information without alerting the entire country to what they’re doing. 

Dr. Selvig is an older man, but he fits the professor vibe nicely - oversized sweater paired with sweatpants and four different pens sticking out of his pockets. He looks confused when he sees Tony.

“Uh, I thought you paged me,” he says. He fidgets with his watch.

“I did,” Roscoe says. “Mr. Stark brought his...friend who’s interested in space. They want to talk to you. I have a few phone calls to make. Try to sound normal.”

With that, Roscoe leaves the three of them standing in the lobby of the research building.

Selvig sighs. “Come on. I’ll give you the tour.”

“We’d rather see your office,” Tony says.

Selvig looks like he just wants them gone. “Sure.”

They follow him down the hall and to an office so cluttered Clara thinks it would give Coulson a heart attack. There are stacks of paper and charts and graphs with things Clara doesn’t understand piled up on every available surface. 

The chair behind the desk is the only clean spot in the whole office, and Clara has to catch Tony’s arm when he almost trips over a pile of books.

“Research,” Selvig says. “Sorry.”

He finally looks away from Tony at Clara, and Clara doesn’t like the slight frown on his face.

She really doesn’t like it when he says, “Do I know you?”

“No,” she says, even as Tony says, “She works for SHIELD, done anything shady recently?”

Clara wants to slap her forehead, especially when Selvig looks the most present since they got here.

“Get out,” he says.

“I don’t understand why you can’t keep your mouth shut,” she tells Tony.

“Don’t like SHIELD?” Tony guesses.

“They confiscated all my research,” Selvig says. “And Dr. Foster’s! Do you know how close we were to proving we’re not the only life on Earth? There were disturbances! They meant something! And you -” he jabs his finger in Clara’s direction - “Your agency took it all. And now it’s back to the same old Selvig believes in alien jokes.”

“New Mexico?” Tony guesses.

“Yes,” Selvig says, “You can’t have anything else. Not that it matters. What you already took can’t be replaced. So now I’m back to teaching. I hate teaching.”

Tony pokes Clara’s side. “New Mexico?”

“I can’t talk about it,” she tells him. “Classified.”

“Definitely aliens,” Tony says. “So when you let a suspect escape…”

Clara whirls on him. “I said, I can’t talk about it. Press me for things that’ll get me in deeper shit with SHIELD, and you can chase Banner on your own.”

“Banner?” Selvig asks. “What do you want with Dr. Banner?”

“We want to find him,” Tony says, “and, if it’ll make you more cooperative, she’s ex-SHIELD.”

“I’m on leave, I haven’t quit,” Clara says.

“Yet.”

Clara takes a deep breath.

“I don’t like SHIELD,” Selvig says. “I don’t trust them either. We were getting somewhere.”

“What you found was classified,” Clara says, because what she’s getting is that a team of space enthusiasts were drawn to an area where space travel did in fact occur and SHIELD panicked so took all their research, “but I can talk to SHIELD about working with them. You’ll have to sign a bunch of non-disclosure shit but they might let you have access to your research and might even fund your continuation of it.”

“Leave is code for suspension,” Selvig says. “How much can you really help me?”

“Then you contact them,” Clara says. “I can’t get you your research back, but this might let you work on it again. Or you can not take the chance and keep teaching.”

“You make a good point,” he says. 

“When you call, ask for Agent Coulson.”

Selvig’s scowling again. “He’s the one who took everything to begin with. They even took Darcy’s iPod!”

Clara doesn’t know who Darcy is. And right now, she doesn’t really care. “Call him or don’t. Up to you. What do you know about Dr. Banner?”

“Nothing,” he says. He holds his hands up when both Clara and Tony glare at him. “I’m being honest. He vanished. I thought he died in the explosion, but his name wasn’t on the memorial. He’s just gone. I heard General Ross was looking for him, because it was his experiment that went wrong, but even he’s given up.”

“General Thaddeus Ross?” Tony asks. 

“You know him?” Clara asks.

“What was he doing at Culver?” Tony asks.

“What do you think the military wanted with a bunch of scientists?” Selvig asks. “I assumed it was some kind of weapon. Dr. Banner wasn’t allowed to talk about it. And, it’s not proven that it’s Ross’s experiment that went wrong, but it’s a pretty good guess.”

“I’ve worked with Ross,” Tony says. “Motivated guy. Pretty sure he’s spearheading the attempt to get me to militarize the armor. He wants all the coolest toys.”

The way Tony talks about him suggests that Clara doesn’t want to meet him. Unfortunate because he now appears to be their best lead. 

“But, he’s an easy guy to find,” Tony says. “We’ll set up an appointment later. I want to talk about New Mexico.”

Clara groans. The man does not know how to stop pushing.

“I’m not asking you,” he says. “Classified, remember? But Dr. Selvig isn’t a SHIELD agent. He can tell me things. Right?”

“I’d advise against it,” Clara tells Selvig. “Unless screwing SHIELD over is more important to you than your research.”

Selvig waffles before shaking his head. “Sorry, Mr. Stark. Our research could change everything. I can’t take any risks.”

Tony shrugs. “Worth a shot. Hey! Maybe we could recruit Dr. Selvig and Dr. Foster to our team.”

“SHIELD would never turn over their research if you did that,” Clara says. “Also,  _ your  _ team. Also, how many scientists do you need?”

“All of them? How is that even a question? Well, not all of them. I did already say no to Pym, but he’s an asshole. Who names things after themselves? Did I name the Iron Man armor after myself? No. Pym particles. Was he serious?”

Clara looks to Selvig for help. The man just shrugs.

Tony’s rant is interrupted by the return of Roscoe. 

“I took it upon myself to get you dinner reservations,” Roscoe says. “I hope that wasn’t too forward of me.”

“Reservations?” Clara asks. “I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten anywhere you needed a reservation.”

Roscoe’s smile goes tight at the corners. “A new experience then.”

“And a great one,” Tony says. “I can’t believe SHIELD’s never sprung for steak dinner for you.”

“There’s a cafeteria on base,” Clara says. “Why go out and buy food when it’s free and you don’t have to go anywhere?”

“This is probably not the time to tell you I’ve used my private jet to fly Pepper to Japan for sushi,” Tony says.

“There is never a time you should tell me that,” Clara says. “Do you know how incredibly wasteful that is?”

Roscoe clears his throat. “Apologies for interrupting, but the reservation is for a half hour from now. We’ve arranged transport for you as well. Would you like to change before departing?”

Tony’s in suit pants and a t-shirt. Clara’s wearing running tights and a long sleeve Stark Industries shirt.

“I took everything nice Pepper got me out of my backpack,” Clara says.

“Of course you did. We’re fine as we are.”

Roscoe looks like it pains him to let them go out dressed at they are, but Tony Stark isn’t someone you correct. And Clara doubts any restaurant owner cares what he wears into their place as long as he’s got his wallet.

~*~

Dinner turns out to be a small table in the VIP room complete with candles on the table.

“Is this a joke?” Clara asks, once Roscoe and the waiter are gone.

Tony spreads his cloth napkin over his lap. “Hardly. It’s a clever set-up. Well, I’m sure Roscoe thinks it’s clever. Pretty basic stall technique, though.”

“Stall?” Clara asks.

Tony tuts his tongue. “I thought you were the spy out of the two of us. You really think Ross is going to let Tony Stark poke around his disaster site without wanting a word?” Tony shakes his head. “It’s two hours from DC to where we are. Which means Roscoe needed to find a way to keep us here until Ross made it. Hence, dinner. Now, don’t be afraid to order what you want. It’s on the university’s tab, and I don’t like Roscoe.”

“Right,” Clara says.

Dinner with Tony isn’t so bad. He tells her about his favorite places he’s traveled for Stark Industries, and the weirdest foods he’s had to eat in the name of international trade, and they’re ordering dessert when General Ross comes into the back room.

He’s in full uniform, hat held in his hand, and Tony immediately stands to greet him.

“General,” Tony says, slipping from Tony to Mr. Stark with an ease Clara thinks Natasha would admire. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Pleasure as always, Tony,” Ross says. He looks over at Clara. “Who’s your friend?”

“Clara Barton,” she says. 

“Pleasure to meet you,” Ross says. He smiles at the waitress. “Mind if I add a slice of chocolate cake and a whiskey to the dessert order? Dessert’s my favorite part of any meal.”

Clara hates whiskey. More than anything else, it reminds her of her dad. She forces a smile as Tony drags a third chair over to their table.

“What brings you this way?” Tony asks. “Figured you’d be busy in DC what with all the wars we’ve got going on.”

“Even busier than usual now that we’re renegotiating all our weapons contracts. Not that I blame you, of course. What happened to you is enough to turn any man off weapons. But, well, everyone knows Justin Hammer isn’t you.”

“Damn right he’s not. Not as many degrees and not nearly as attractive.”

Ross smiles, and it’s as fake as the one Tony’s wearing. 

Clara wonders if they would notice if she just left.

Luckily, dessert comes quickly and they talk about where the best chocolate cake in the US is and where the best cheesecake can be found and by the time that’s done, their dessert is done, and they can get down to business.

“So,” Tony says as he pushes his plate away. “You never answered why you’re here.”

“Because of you,” Ross says. “I hear you’re looking for Bruce Banner.”

“No one else is,” Tony says.

“Wrong. I’m looking for him.”

Clara’s not sure who’s more surprised at Ross’s admittance, her or Tony.

“Are you?” Tony asks.

“I’m sure you heard about the Culver accident,” Ross says, “Bruce Banner was one of the few that survived, and he disappeared. For all we know, he hit his head on a piece of lab equipment and doesn’t remember who he is. More than that, though, some of the labs were using radiation. The man’s sick, Tony, and I want to find him so we can help him get better.”

“It’s been four years,” Tony says. “How haven’t you found him?”

“I’m looking, but it isn’t a priority,” Ross says. He laughs a little, hollow, and looks down at his empty plate. “It sounds terrible when I say it like that, but with everything going down in the world, I can’t give my full attention to one person. But you could.”

“And I am,” Tony says. “You have any leads?”

“Last spotting we had was Rome,” Ross says. “But that was awhile back. Look, I want you to find him so we can help him, but there’s something selfish about this, too.”

“Oh?” Stark asks.

Clara finds it hard to believe that Ross is about to admit his hand in the explosion but hey, maybe he’s dumber than all the medals on his chest suggest.

“He was dating my daughter, and she’s been quite...distraught since he disappeared. She hasn’t talked to me since.”

“I heard there’d been a falling out,” Tony says. “Figures it would’ve been over a boy.”

Ross shrugs as if to say  _ daughters _ . 

“Well,” Tony says. “I guess Rome is as good a place as any to start our search.” He looks over at Clara. “Ever been to Italy?”

“Nope.”

“What do you bring to the table?” Ross asks her.

“I’m the search part of search & rescue,” she says. “Tony’s obviously the rescue.”

“FBI?” Ross asks. “CIA?”

Clara smiles, bland. “Independent contractor.”

“Moving on from models to dangerous women?” Ross asks Tony. 

“Right now she’s helping me find Banner,” Tony says. “We’ll see where things go from there.”

“Once I get paid, I’m going home,” Clara says, letting her disgust show on her face. “And then you can have your science party.”

“Science party?” Ross asks, amused.

“After everything that’s happened, I decided I needed more friends,” Tony explains, “but there aren’t very many people smart enough to keep up with me. Dr. Banner’s one of the few, so you can understand my desire to find him.”

“Of course,” Ross says. “You have my contact information, right? I’d like updates on your progress, if you don’t mind. Just so we can have the medical teams on standby when you find him.”

“Of course,” Tony says.

~*~

“We’re not letting Ross anywhere near him,” Tony tells her later, when they’re back on his jet. He’s jabbing away at his computer, some kind of program but he’s going too fast for Clara to figure out what. “There’s something else going on.”

“You mean he isn’t just trying to find his daughter’s long lost love?” Clara asks. She bats her eyes for emphasis.

“I don’t think he was lying about Banner being sick,” Tony says. “But if what Selvig was saying is true, then Ross is the reason Banner’s sick, and I’m guessing he doesn’t want people knowing that.”

“So what? He’s trying to find him and offer him medical treatment in exchange for keeping his mouth shut?”

Tony shrugs. “Not all the pieces are there yet. I’m putting together a program to track all mentions of Bruce Banner.”

“How illegal is this program?” Clara asks.

“I’m going to plead the fifth.”

“I don’t want to know anything that could incriminate me,” Clara says. “Are we really going to Rome?”

“If he was still there, Ross would have him. No, we’re going to Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Best chili cheese fries I’ve ever had are in Texas,” Tony tells her.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about food,” he tells her. “Oh, stop giving me that look. One, we have to give the program time to work. Two, this is a vacation. Vacations are about fun.”

“I don’t think we have the same idea of fun.”

~*~

Admittedly, the cheese fries are good. 

And they get them at the local state fair where Tony then tries to convince her she wants to ride the rollercoaster. 

“It’s a death trap,” she tells him, “and I don’t think the cheese fries will taste as good coming up.”

Tony makes a face. “TMI.”

She shrugs and looks around. State fairs aren’t the same as circuses, but there are enough similar elements for her to feel at home. There are the rides and the big crowds and the smell of animals and too many people pressed too close together.

There’s also a whole line of carnival games, and she’s not sure whether she wants to go on the hunt for more food or win Tony an obnoxious prize more.

“Fried oreo?” Tony asks, looking at one of the food stands. “I hear they’re good.”

“Only if you want to wreck your stomach,” Clara tells him. “Come on. Let’s go play a game.”

“How come you weren’t this excited about the fries?” he grumbles, even as he follows her. 

“What do you want?” Clara asks when they reach the row of games. “Pick a prize and I’ll win it for you.”

“Cocky,” he says. “I like it.”

He walks up and down the row, until he stops in front of one where you have to shoot cans off a moving train. He points at a giant pink elephant. 

“It’s hideous and I want it,” he says.

Clara laughs. “You picked something with guns? Didn’t want it to be a little challenging?”

“So far you’re all talk,” he says.

She hands the attendant a five dollar bill and he gives her one of the prop rifles. She turns it over in her hands, tests the weight, and then watches the train go by a few times. It has a stutter, but a predictable one. Now all she needs to do is figure out the rifle’s quirks. 

“I’m waiting,” Tony says. He actually taps his foot.

“I’ll shoot you instead,” she says, but she’s smiling as she says it. She points the gun at a spot beyond the train and the cans. She shoots, notes where she was aiming and where the marble hit.

“That wasn’t even close,” Tony says. “I thought you were an expert marksman or something?”

She ignores him, puts the rifle on her shoulder and hits each can off the train without missing a single one. When she’s done, the attendant and Tony are both staring at her.

“I want the elephant,” she tells the attendant.

“Yeah,” he says. He uses a hook on the end of a pole to get it down.

“Holy shit,” Tony finally says once they’re walking away. “How did you do that? I thought all the games are rigged.”

“They are,” Clara says. “The trick is figuring out how and then adjusting. I grew up in a circus.”

She doesn’t know why she adds that last part. She doesn’t need to, he doesn’t need to know why she can do what she does, but, well, she’s growing to like him. Trust him even. 

“The circus?” he asks. He looks like he doesn’t quite believe her.

“Ran away from home and joined the circus,” she says. “Lots of people talk about it. Barney and I actually did it.”

“That explains all the parkour stuff back on the jet. Were you an acrobat?”

“Lived with the acrobat twins, so I picked up on a lot of their stuff, worked it into my routine, but I was a sharpshooter, mostly bow. Sometimes I did a few knife tricks.”

“Wow,” Tony says. “The circus. Really? I’m no longer impressed by the elephant.”

“That’s fine,” Clara says, “I won’t let you give it to Pepper, then.”

“Hey!” he protests. Then, “How did you know I was going to do that?”

Clara rolls her eyes. “Do you know how many times Agent Sitwell’s dragged me to some carnival or another, because he wanted me to win something for one of his nieces? As soon as people find out I was in the circus, the first thing they want is for me to win them something so they can pass it off as something they’d won.”

“Pepper would know in an instant,” Tony says. “I’m terrible at lying to her.”

Before Clara can respond, Tony’s phone beeps.

“Ha,” he says, pulling it out. “We’re going to Brazil. Now that’s the kind of vacation I’m talking about.”

“You’ve got a location?” Clara asks.

“Yep. And you don’t want to ask how.”

“I won’t.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for discussion of past child abuse.

Clara doesn’t like the jet. It’s bulky and it’s obvious, and she’s half-expecting both Ross and SHIELD to have made it to Rio de Janeiro before they do.

Somehow, they don’t.

“I’ve got the exact location,” Tony tells her as they move through the city. 

He’s in a suit and has a briefcase with his armor in it. She’s got her bow tucked in her sleeve and a couple easy to reach arrows in her backpack. She’s not sure which one of them looks more out of place - the businessman or the backpacker. 

Maybe neither, because no one stares at them too long or edges away from them when they do notice them.

“He used his computer,” Tony explains. “And -”

“You weren’t going to tell me how, remember?” she says.

Tony pouts. “Yes, but that’s because of your morals, and I want to brag about my genius.”

“Brag to Banner when we find him,” she says. 

She feels too exposed with Tony at her side, but she doesn’t want to split up because, even with the armor, he’s the weaker of the two of them. He can fly and shoot stuff out of his hands, but she doubts he’s undergone any real training. Something to bring up with Pepper when they get back from their trip.

Of course, if they do end up finding Banner today, then this isn’t going to take Tony’s full three month vacation. She hopes they don’t end up looking for anyone else. Working with Tony is stressful.

As they leave the main part of the city and get into the more rundown part, Tony begins to stand out more and more, and there are definitely people eyeing his suit, and his briefcase.

“You’re attracting attention,” she says.

“It’s my natural state of being.”

“And not helpful right now.”

She stops fidgeting with where her bow is hidden and pulls the knife from her boot.

“Woah!” Tony says. “Is that really necessary?”

Clara looks around, at the faces peering through windows and around trash heaps, all of them focused on Tony and his obvious wealth.

“Yeah,” she says. 

They’re quiet until Tony taps her shoulder, “This is the building.”

It’s a multi-story building that’s seen better days. Clara wishes she could stash Tony somewhere while she does recon, but she’s not sure Tony will stay put and she’s even less sure that he won’t get jumped. Doing things Tony’s way makes her feel way more exposed than she likes.

Another point in favor of not becoming part of his team.

“Stand there,” she tells him, pointing to a shadowed part of the hallway. “Don’t speak, don’t move. Let me do this.”

He throws off a salute and she rolls her eyes before knocking on the first door.

It’s a woman, and Clara smiles and talks to her in Portuguese, telling her that she’s been hiking through South America, and she’s looking for a friend of hers. The woman’s eyes flick behind Clara, towards the stairs, when Clara describes Banner, but she claims not to know him.

Clara thanks her for her time and turns back to tell Tony they need to go upstairs only to find that Tony isn’t where she left him. 

“Fucking hell,” she mutters.

She slips her knife out of her sleeve and goes up the stairs, because he hadn’t gone outside. She finds him kneeling on the ground, getting his face licked by a dog.

“What part of don’t move didn’t you understand?” she demands, slipping her knife back into her sleeve. 

“Dog!” he says, as if that’s all the explanation he needs to give.

“I like dogs, too,” she says, “but you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Naw,” Tony says. The dog rolls over onto its back, looking for a bellyrub. “Look at this guy. Who’s a good dog?”

Clara’s about to tell him to get up when the door in front of them cracks open. 

The dog immediately rolls to its feet and bounds towards the door, nosing it further open.

“You’ve got a nice dog,” Tony says.

Clara catches a glimpse of dark curls before the door starts to shut again. She sticks her foot in the doorway, and the man behind it pushes once to see if she’ll move her foot and then scrambles backwards.

“Dr. Banner,” Clara says, pushing the door all the way open. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“We?” the man asks, pushing his glasses up his nose. He wrings his hands, nervous. “I didn’t really want to be found.”

“Really?” Tony asks, following Clara into the apartment.

Banner’s nerves quickly give way to shock. “Tony Stark?”

Tony grins. “The one and only. How’re you doing? Any radiation problems?”

Banner’s face immediately closes off. “I think you should go.”

Clara wants to beat her head against the wall, but she’s afraid it’ll crumble if she does. “Tony, you remember after Selvig when I told you you weren’t allowed to talk anymore?”

“Not good at listening,” Tony says. He drops down on the couch that appears to be doubling as a bed, as if this is his house.

“Selvig?” Banner asks. “You were with Erik?”

“Thought he could help us find you,” Tony says. “He’s half-convinced you’re dead. Of course, he also believes Earth was recently visited by aliens, so.”

“Aliens?” Banner asks.

“Tony’s fishing for classified information,” Clara says. “Ignore him. It’s what I’ve been doing.”

“I’m so sorry,” Banner says. “I’m being rude. I know who Tony Stark is, but I haven’t met you. Bruce Banner.”

He holds out a hand. His grip is firm but hesitant, like he’s afraid of squeezing too hard.

“Clara Barton,” she says. 

“Uh, about to be rude again,” Banner says, rocking on his feet. “But how did you find me? And why?”

“How will have to come later,” Tony says. “Clara over there doesn’t want to know, because I might have broken a few laws. As to why, well, I was bored.”

“Bored?”

“I’m not smart enough to be a good friend,” Clara explains. “He decided he needed you. So we went looking. Didn’t take very long. I’m surprised no one else has found you yet.”

“They’re still looking?” Banner asks. He looks discouraged by this.

His dog comes over to lick his fingers.

“General Ross is at least,” Tony says. He says it casually, but he’s watching Banner for a reaction.

The man gives one, yanking his hand back from his dog like he’s been burned. “Ross sent you?”

“He thinks he did,” Tony says, “but we didn’t tell him we found you. He seems pretty concerned about radiation poisoning. Thinks you might have cancer. Wants to offer you treatment.”

Banner laughs at this. Clara doesn’t get why it’s funny.

“Obviously, if you come live in my Tower with me, I’ll give you the best treatment available and a lab of your own. And a place to live that wouldn’t be condemned if you were living in America.”

Banner shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“But we are,” Tony says. “So, want to stop running?”

“I need to start again,” Banner says, with a twist to his mouth that Clara recognizes. It’s the look of a man who has had to pick up his life and move it too many times, and doesn’t want to do it again. “If you’ve found me then Ross will be here soon.”

“We figured he was bad news,” Tony says, “Which is why we wanted to find you first. Let’s get to the jet and take off.”

“I can’t go with you,” Banner says.

“And the jet really isn’t subtle,” Clara says. “Ross can probably ground you if he needs to.”

“What are you thinking?” Tony asks.

“We need to sneak into the US,” Clara says. “Which means no private jets. And, probably at some point, no you. You don’t sneak well.”

“You,” Banner shakes his head. “You’re not getting it.”

“Ross is a bad dude,” Tony says. “I’ve designed weapons for him for decades. I know this.”

“He drinks whiskey,” Clara says with a shrug.

Banner looks at her like he knows what she’s really saying. She looks away.

“Only scotch drinkers can be trusted,” Tony says, oblivious. “Anyways, Clara here is a secret agent. I brought her to do the stuff I don’t understand.”

Banner’s looking nervous again.

“I’m not a secret agent,” Clara says. “Look, I think Dr. Banner is right. There’s no way Ross isn’t tracking us. We need to get away from here before he finds us. Somewhere quiet and out of the way where we can discuss what’s going on.”

“We’re bringing Dr. Banner home,” Tony says.

“No,” Clara says, and both Banner and Tony look at her. “I said I would help you find him. It’s Dr. Banner’s choice what he does from here. But, we need to talk about this somewhere that isn’t about to be invaded by the US military.”

“I should pack then,” Banner says.

“Yeah,” Clara says.

“So we’re abandoning the jet?” Tony asks.

“We’ll come back for it,” Clara says. “Or your pilot can bring it home. We’ll discuss it later. Our priority is getting out of here and getting somewhere safe.”

“You know a place?” Tony asks.

“A few. But we’re going to have to dirty you up a bit or we’re going to get mugged for your suit.”

Banner packs quickly, like a man who’s used to putting all his essential in a bag and going. Clara puts Tony in some of Banner’s clothes, and they’re even bigger on him than they are on Banner.

“I don’t like this,” Tony says, tugging at the shirt. “I have no shape.”

“Good,” Clara says. She looks over at Banner, who’s crouched and talking to his dog. “The woman downstairs, the one who said she didn’t know you. Can you leave the dog with her?”

Banner shakes his head. “No. But it’s alright. He was surviving on the street before I got here. He’ll be okay now that I’m leaving.”

He doesn’t have the face of a man who believes what he’s saying, but Clara doesn’t want to be here when Ross shows up. There’s clearly something he wants Banner for, and it’s not something good. Which means they’ll have to fight him, and Clara really does not want to spend her SHIELD suspension in a firefight with a US General. That seems like a good way to end up with a permanent suspension.

Actually, just doing what she’s done so far is probably enough to get her fired.

Something to think about later.

For now, “There a safe house in Piraí,” she says, “Once we get there we can make our plans.”

She’ll  _ definitely _ get in trouble for bringing civilians to a safehouse, but she’s not sure what else to do.

“You’ve spent a lot of time in Brazil?” Tony asks.

“Not as much as other South American countries. And no, I can’t tell you what I was doing there.”

Tony huffs.

As soon as they get moving, though, both men put up zero protest and just go where she leads them. She’d be a little worried that Tony’s had some sort of personality transplant, but he appears to have realized that something much bigger than they realized was going on and that his particular skillsets aren’t useful at the moment.

He makes a small noise when she hotwires a car, but a single glare is enough to make him keep his mouth shut. 

Banner, taking the backseat of the car with zero protest, appears to take a nap. 

She parks the car on the edge of the city and takes them on a winding route to the safehouse, to make sure they aren’t being tailed and to make sure there isn’t a clear trail from their stolen car to their safehouse. 

Their safehouse is really just a corner room on the first floor of a two floor motel-styled apartment building. The rooms make up a big square with the courtyard being full of grass, a couple trees, a pool, and a sand volleyball court. Around the building are even more trees. 

Clara picks the lock and lets them in.

“I have to check-in with SHIELD,” she says. “I don’t want them sending a team to figure out why their safehouse has been broken into.”

“Alright,” Tony says. His eyes do a critical sweep of the room. 

“Welcome to the glamorous abode of a SHIELD agent,” Clara says. She goes to get the emergency cell phone from where it’s been taped to the bottom of the cabinet that sits over the refrigerator.  

Banner and Tony are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, Banner looking as uncomfortable as ever. Tony starts asking questions, and Clara takes that as her cue to go into the bedroom with her phone.

It only takes two rings for someone to pick up.

As soon as she gives her name and ID number, she’s transferred.

She’s not surprised when she hears Coulson’s voice.

“Barton, what are you doing in Brazil?” he asks. He doesn’t sound angry. That means more to her than it should.

“Tony Stark’s idea of a vacation,” she answers.  

“We saw his private jet went down there. We figured he was spending time in Copacabana.”

“Not quite,” Clara says. “We needed a safe place to lie low, and I know this is against a dozen different regulations, but I brought him here.”

“Do you need an extraction?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she says. She looks through the doorway to see Tony gesticulating as he makes some sort of point. Banner is pressing back into his chair, but it looks more out of fear of Tony’s flailing hands than actual fear.

“Does this have something to do with General Ross arranging for military transport to Rocinha?” Coulson asks.

Well, that answers the question of whether Ross is coming after them or not.

Her silence must be answer enough because Coulson says, “Barton, tell me the truth, is Dr. Bruce Banner with you right now?”

Clara looks into the kitchen. “Yeah,” she says. 

She can hear Coulson’s deep breath on the other line. “Stark is with you?”

“He was bored,” Clara says. “Wanted another friend.”

“So he decided to track down Bruce Banner.” Coulson takes another breath. “Does Stark have the armor?”

“He does.” Clara’s starting to worry. “Sir, what’s going on?”

“There’s very good reason Dr. Banner has been hiding,” Coulson tells her. “Do you remember the reports on the Hulk?”

“Big, green, angry?” She answers.

“That was what was put in the public SHIELD files,” Coulson tells her. “What you didn’t have clearance for was the fact that the Hulk is the alter ego of Dr. Bruce Banner.”

Clara looks back into the kitchen. Banner is leaning forward, answering whatever question Stark’s asked him, and he looks, well, he looks like a scientist in his oversized clothes and glasses and messy hair, but Clara’s seen the footage of the Hulk. And she knows how quickly nice can turn into anger, how easily a man can go from safe to very, very not safe.

She takes her own deep breath. “Orders, sir?”

“What weapons do you have on you?” 

“Knife and bow with paralytic arrows. Tony’s design.”

She wants to say  _ I’m sorry _ , she wants to say  _ I didn’t know _ , but that will have to wait until she gets herself out of this mess. From what she’s seen of the Hulk, she’ll be lucky to survive. 

“The arrows might work,” Coulson says. “Can Stark’s armor carry two?”

“I don’t know,” she says. 

This is why you don’t go in without doing your full research. This is why the Tony Stark ‘bluster and knock on the front door’ plan is a bad one. If she’d done even a little poking around, she would’ve pinged some sort of SHIELD alert and Coulson would’ve warned her off Bruce Banner. If she hadn’t been so desperate to do  _ something _ she could’ve avoided trouble.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, because this might be the only chance she gets. “If I can get us both out, I will, but priority is Tony. Can I expect back-up from SHIELD or Ross?”

She doesn’t understand why Ross didn’t tell them what they were walking into. He has to know what happened to Banner. That has to be what he meant by side effects from the radiation. Which means Ross has been hunting Banner to what - put him down? capture him? 

The Hulk is on SHIELD’s list of potential superhero candidates. Maybe Ross is making his own team.

And Clara’s gotten caught right in the middle of it.

“SHIELD has no one close,” Coulson says, “Ross appears to have made a stop in England, but he’s on his way.”

“This probably isn’t what Fury meant for me to do when he suspended me.”

“Unpaid leave,” Coulson says. “Barton, once he’s green, run. If you can tranq him before then you might have a chance.”

Might have a chance, not the kind of pep talk she likes.

“Understood, sir. I should go before they wonder where I’ve gone.”

“Come home, Hawkeye,” he tells her. 

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

She hangs up and slips the phone into her pocket. She might need it later. 

Going back into the room, she forces a smile on her face, and interrupts their discussion of whether nuclear power can be safely harnessed to say, “Twenty questions? Can I play?”

Banner shrugs. “Sure.”

Tony eyes her, curious, because he knows her well enough that he knows the dumb blonde hick persona isn’t her. She picks up his briefcase and drops it on his lap.

“How strong’s the armor?”

“How much weight can I lift?” he asks. “Haven’t tried it yet. Why?”

Now Banner’s curious. Clara has to be careful here.

“I was thinking about Pepper,” Clara says, “and the way you two have been dancing around each other.”

Tony squawks.

“And do you know what would be romantic? Flying her somewhere in the suit. Can you do that? Or is it one person only?”

“It could probably do two,” Tony says. “Not comfortably and not for long. You really think she’d like it? Because I could so some redesigns. I could -”

Clara’s been slowly moving backwards, slowly getting to where she can reach her backpack. As soon as she’s in reach she snaps her bow out and has an arrow drawn.

“Woah!” Tony says. “Hey!”

“Put the suit on, Tony,” Clara says, not taking her attention off Banner.

He hunches in his seat, shoulders drooping like he’d expected this but had hoped for something else.

“Why are you pointing an arrow at him?” Tony asks. “What happened to giving him a choice?”

“This is his choice,” Clara says. “He lets us leave or I put an arrow in him. Now put your suit on.”

“No,” Tony says and Clara would shoot  _ him _ if she didn’t need him to operate the suit. “What the hell is going on? Have you been working with SHIELD this whole time? Were you lying about being on leave?”

And this is why Clara doesn’t like new partners. There’s no trust.

“Not lying. I’m still suspended. But since SHIELD wants me to return from leave alive, they had some interesting things to share.”

“You told them what we were doing?” Tony demands.

“I told them we were at the safehouse,” Clara says. “They wanted to know what we were doing in Rio de Janeiro. And I guess they’ve got an alert on Ross, because when they figured out he was headed our way, well, didn’t take long for Agent Coulson to ask if Bruce Banner was with us. He’s got quite the reputation.”

Angry. Invincible. 

Clara keeps her bow drawn and checks to make sure Banner isn’t changing color or growing bigger. He still appears to be trying to grow  _ smaller _ .

“Now, I don’t want any trouble,” Clara says. “I’m willing to call this a wash and give you a head start on Ross. Let Tony put the suit on, let us leave, and no one has to get hurt.”

“I won’t hurt you,” Banner promises. “But you need to leave. My control isn’t good.”

“Hear that?” Clara asks Tony. “We need to leave. Get the suit on.”

“What do you two know that I don’t?” Tony asks. “Why is Ross hunting you? And why does Clara look more scared right now then she did when she was my bodyguard and people were trying to kill her?”

“You really don’t know,” Banner says. He looks over at Clara. “And you didn’t until just now.”

“I never would’ve come looking for you if I did,” Clara says. “I like my angry men not invincible. Easier to fight back.”

“I  _ still  _ don’t know,” Tony says.

Banner sighs. “You hear of the Hulk?”

“Big green smashing thing?” Tony asks.

Banner smiles and points to himself.

“No way,” Tony says.

“Yes way. Gamma radiation experiment gone bad. Well, that and supersoldier experiment gone bad.”

“You were trying to recreate Steve Rogers?” Tony asks. “You do realize my father was a part of that? Why didn’t you ask for help?”

“I didn’t realize that’s what Ross was doing at first,” Banner says. “He told me we were trying to figure out how to protect soldiers from radiation poisoning. And that was true, if only because he wanted to use gamma radiation instead of vita rays, and didn’t want to kill his supersoldier subjects before they could grow immune.”

“Shit,” Tony says. 

“Tony, please put your suit on,” Clara says. She can’t keep her bow drawn forever, and no matter how placid Banner seems right now, it won’t last. She wonders if she needs to evacuate the entire apartment complex.

“Absolutely not,” Tony says. “We’re not leaving Bruce here for Ross to get his hands on.”

“Bruce?” Clara asks. “Since when are we on a first name basis?”

“I was getting to know him while you were planning to turn him over,” Tony says, and there’s that nasty edge to his voice, the one that hasn’t been directed at her in a long time. 

“Did I say anything about turning him over?” Clara asks. “No. All I said is that we’re leaving. Sorry for ruining the life you made in Rocinha. Good luck somewhere else. Okay, we’re all friends. Now, let’s  _ go _ .”

Tony tosses the briefcase across the room. “No.”

Clara points her arrow at the ground and then relaxes her hold on her bow. 

“This is why I won’t join your Avengers,” she tells him. “You’re a shitty partner to have in the field.”

She collapses her bow, sticks her arrow in her backpack and goes outside. The roof isn’t safe if Banner Hulks out, so she goes until she finds a climbable tree and gets herself a high perch before pulling the phone out of her pocket. 

“Situation?” Coulson asks, to the point as always. 

She thinks she might detect some relief in his voice. “Stark won’t leave.”

“Have you tried telling him not to be a selfish dick?”

Clara laughs. “Yeah, actually I did. Didn’t do much. Banner’s still human, though, so that’s something.”

“Where are you?”

“In a tree,” she says, a little ashamed. “Hiding.”

“Good,” Coulson says. “Priority is now your safety. If you leave and get to another safehouse, we’ll extract you.”

“And leave Stark alone with the Hulk?”

“If that’s what he wants.”

She shakes her head even though Coulson can’t see her. “Banner seems calm now, but what if Ross finds us? No way Stark makes it out of that alive. I promised Pepper I would keep him safe.”

“Hawkeye, your orders are to get yourself to safety.”

“I’m not a SHIELD agent right now,” she says. “That means your orders are really just suggestions.”

“Clara,” he says, startling her bad enough that she almost falls out of her tree. “The Hulk is dangerous.”

“Then why was he on your list?”

“We were hoping to find a way to help him learn control. But he doesn’t have it yet. Which makes him a threat, not an asset.”

She can see a figure walking towards her tree. “I’ll have to call you back,” she says.

She hears Coulson protest as she hangs up.

Banner walks over to the base of her tree, but he doesn’t make any move to climb up. He just looks up at where she is and says, “I never thought to go up. People never look up.”

She doesn’t think he’s talking about being on the run as the Hulk. He looks sad, looks  _ young _ , and she knows that look too.

“I never thought to hide up high until it was too late,” she says. “How it goes, right? As soon as you learn something, it doesn’t matter anymore?”

Banner sits down at the base of her tree. “Beer was his drink of choice. Didn’t get him drunk fast, but I think he liked the build-up. Can by can he’d get angrier and angrier. I remember being thankful he didn’t drink bottles. Cans don’t hurt so bad when they get thrown at you. Kind of fucked up. With your dad, it was whiskey, wasn’t it?”

Clara’s not sure she wants to bond with the Hulk. 

“Yeah,” she eventually admits. “My brother and I would hide under the bed. It always made it worse. Once we got old enough, Barney, he was older than me, he grabbed my hand and we ran away to the circus.”

And I killed him a couple months ago, she thinks but doesn’t say.

“I just dreamed about running away,” Banner says. “I dreamed about being too big for anyone to hurt me, about being so scary no one even wanted to try. The dreams didn’t stop after I left home. I got bullied at school. I’d lie in bed at night with an icepack on whatever hurt most and think about being the biggest kid in school, because no one ever went after the big kids.”

He plays with the grass at his feet. “There’s a rumor, a myth really, that the super soldier serum enhances whatever’s inside of you. That’s why Erskine wanted a good man, why Steve Rogers didn’t turn out like the Red Skull. Sometimes, I think maybe I become the Hulk, because my dreams are finally coming true.” He pulls up a few clumps of grass. “Most of the time I think it’s because it brought out whatever drinking brought out of my dad.”

Clara doesn’t have a response to that. 

Banner sighs. “I didn’t ask for this. And I’ve been trying to stay under the radar, trying to limit potential triggers. I don’t  _ want _ to be the Hulk. I don’t want to hurt people.”

Her dad would say that sometimes. I don’t want to hurt you but - you’re stupid, you made me, you shouldn’t’ve have done that.

She doesn’t think Banner means it in the same way. 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she admits.

“I’m not going to pressure you,” Banner tells her. “But Stark wants to talk to you. He says, and I quote, ‘not to apologize but to explain a few things’.”

“He’s a frustrating person to work with,” Clara says.

“He’s very opinionated,” Banner agrees.

Clara sighs. “You have no control once you Hulk out, how’s your control keeping you from Hulking?”

“It’s been 158 days since my last incident,” Banner says. “I’ve taken up yoga.”

It’ll have to do. She drops down from her tree.

“Alright,” she says. “Let’s go hear this not apology.”

~*~

Tony’s still in the kitchen chair, slouching, but his eyes track their entrance back into the safehouse. 

“So?” Clara asks.

He looks at Banner before sighing and pulling up his shirt.

Clara can’t help her gasp. There are black tendrils snaking out from the arc reactor, and she doesn’t know a whole lot about science and biology, but she knows that’s not a good thing.

“Palladium poisoning,” Tony says. “The arc reactor’s killing me. Ironic since it’s also keeping me alive.”

“And you thought Bruce Banner could fix it,” she says. Which is why he was so eager to track the man down after five years of apparently not caring where he was. 

“I do also want him for my superhero club,” Tony says.

Clara walks over to the window and contemplates jumping out of it. Would Stark put on the armor and chase her? Would that bring Ross down on them even faster?

“You’re not happy with me,” Tony says.

“Wow, you  _ are _ a genius,” she says.

“Which part are you mad about? Just curious.”

“The lying part.”

Fuck, this is what bothers her about Fury - the secrets, the half-truths, the subtle manipulations because he doesn’t trust her to do her job if she knows the truth. Or maybe because he just doesn't trust her. Tony was supposed to be different. She doesn’t know why she actually believed that.

“I would’ve gone with you,” she says. “If you had told me you were sick and needed help, I still would've done it.”

“If Pepper knew she wouldn’t have let me leave.”

“Stop,” Clara says. She suddenly feels so, so tired. “I don’t care why you thought you needed to lie. We need to figure out how to get out of this mess. I’m assuming, since Banner is now your personal doctor, he wants to come to the US?”

“I’ll research the poisoning either way,” Banner says. “I’m not sure I want to be found yet.”

“But we do need to get you somewhere safe,” Clara says. “After ruining your hiding spot, the least I can do is help find you another one.”

“How are we going to do that?” Tony asks.

Clara’s smile is edged with something not very nice. “I have a plan.”


	4. Chapter 4

Clara pulls her fist back and punches Tony in the face. It doesn’t feel as good as she hoped it would. Honestly, she’s kind of glad she  _ doesn’t _ enjoy hitting people. But still. It doesn’t feel like justice, either.

It just feels like punching her quasi-friend in the face.

“Ow,” Tony says. “I knew it was going to hurt, but, ow.”

“It’s this or shoot you with an arrow,” she says. 

She punches him in the stomach. He doubles over, groaning. Bruce is in the other room, covering his ears and humming to himself. Clara’s not sure if beating Tony up for the sake of their mission would trigger the Hulk, but they decided it was best to be safe.

She hits him twice more before tying him to one of the chairs.

“I’m not going to tie your mouth,” she says. “And I’ve told Coulson what the plan is. If Ross and his men don’t find you within the next twelve hours, he’ll extract you. You might get hungry, but nothing bad’s going to happen to you.”

“This is why I don’t let you make the plans,” he says.

The plan is for Clara to tie Tony up, take the briefcase, take Bruce, and head for the airport where SHIELD will pick them up. Tony was wrong about her working for SHIELD the whole time, but it’s a good cover - Clara using Tony and also Ross to find Banner for SHIELD. 

It will keep Tony from having to straight up tell a US General, no, I won’t hand Bruce Banner over to you, and it should give Bruce some protection. Being with SHIELD might not be great, but it’ll certainly be better than letting Ross get him.

“And I had Coulson call Pepper,” Clara says. “She’s a good actress. If she finds out you’ve been abducted in Brazil, she’ll cry a few tears, do the whole thing, but she knows what’s really going on. She’s not going to worry.”

“You should stop reassuring me and leave,” Tony tells her. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth. She has to resist the urge to wipe it away. “All of your plans mean shit if you stay long enough for Ross to get you.”

“Yeah,” Clara says. 

She pats him on the head and then goes into the bedroom. She taps Bruce on the shoulder, and he looks up, taking his hands off his ears.

“Ready to go?” she asks.

He nods.

They’ve packed the briefcase into his backpack, because there’s no room in hers, and she figures if one of them is going to survive, it’s going to be the indestructible one.

They’re aiming to get to Paraguay. All they have to do is get across the border to Ciudad del Este, and there’ll be someone to pick them up at the airport. They can do this. They can. There’s a car stored in the garage, and Clara and Bruce climb in and hit the road.

“It’s a 16 hour drive provided we run into no problems, take no breaks, and drive the speed limit,” Clara tells him.

Bruce sits in the passenger seat, backpack on his lap, arms clutching the backpack to his chest. “Does that mean you want to take turns driving?”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Clara says. 

It takes them three and a half hours to make it to São Paulo, and Clara was going to switch cars there anyways, but the notification in her phone only makes it more urgent that they do.

“Tony’s been picked up,” she says.

He worked it out with Jarvis to send Clara an anonymous message in the event that Ross got to him. It means they’re closer than Clara wants them to be. A four hour head start doesn’t seem like enough, because she doubts Ross will care about being noticed. 

“Guess that means you’re still driving,” Bruce says.

“Yeah.”

They get in their new car and get going. When they pass through Londrina, Clara gets the impression that they’re being followed. By the time they’re going through Arapongas, she’s sure of it.

“You keep checking the rearview mirror,” Bruce says.

“We’ve got friends,” Clara says. She gets off 444 and onto 218. “I was hoping we’d get to Maringá before they caught up to us.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yeah,” she says. “You just keep lamaze breathing over there.”

“You want to share the plan?”

She gets back onto 444. “I’m going to get us back into the city, get them turned around a bit, set up a place to fight, and then see who comes out on top.”

“I don’t like that plan,” he says.

“We can’t outrun them. At least, not together. I can give you a headstart if that’s what you want.”

“I’m not leaving you alone to fight my battles,” he says.

“And I’m not leaving you, either,” Clara says. “Not least of which because when I fight, I have control over what I do. If it makes you feel better, I have a kill only when necessary policy. All my arrows have a paralytic agent. As long as the wound isn’t fatal it just knocks them out.”

“That does actually make me feel better,” Bruce says.

“Good,” Clara says. She slips around a corner, getting beeped at for her trouble, but there’s now another car between her and their pursuers. “I hope you’re better at listening than Tony is. I want you as far out of danger as possible. We’re in trouble if you Hulk out. And be ready to run if I tell you. You’re good at running, right?”

“Yeah.”

She puts the safehouse phone in his hand. “If you have to, run until you’re safe and contact the last number called. Make sure the suit ends up in safe hands. You can decide whether you go with SHIELD or not.”

“You’re serious about this,” he says.

She pulls into a parking garage. “Very. How’s your jumping?”

“If I say good am I going to regret it?”

She grins and slams on the accelerator. Once they get to the top, she abandons the car but keeps her pack. She’ll ditch that, too, if it’s necessary but for now she keeps it. She leads the way, jumping from the roof of the parking garage to the building next to them, and Bruce shakes his head but follows her. 

It’s an office building, and she gets them through the rooftop entrance and pulls the first fire alarm she finds.

“Figure we don’t want an audience for this,” she says.

“But you just told them where we are.”

“Yeah,” she says, and looks around the floor they’re on. It’s full of cubicles and filing cabinets and computers, but there are no people. “This reminds me of a paintball place I went once.”

“Oh goodness,” Bruce says.

Clara finds a bathroom for him to hide in.

“This is the women’s room,” he says.

“Which means it won’t be the first place they look.” She points to the window above the sink. It’s small, but a very motivated person could fit through it. “That’s how you get out if you need to.”

He’s looking pale, which she supposes it better than green but not by much. 

“What if you need help?”

“Then you run.” She grabs his chin and makes sure he’s looking at her. “I’m serious. Either I can do this or I can’t, and if I can’t then you get the hell out.”

“I don’t even know you,” he says, a little helpless.

She softens the hand on his chin, awkwardly pats his cheek. “This is my job,” she says. 

She can’t waste any more time reassuring him. She needs to get ready. She’s relieved to hear him click the lock when she leaves and then she gets to work, rearranging furniture until she’s created a castle of sorts out of filing cabinets and cubicle walls. She gets up in the ceiling where she has a good view of the castle.

The ceiling here is the pop up tiles which means she can not only hide up there but easily get down. And by easily get down she means if she doesn’t distribute her weight perfectly then she’s falling. 

It’s fine.

Everything’s going to be fine.

Ross doesn’t bother with subtlety.

His team bursts onto the floor, led by - not Ross. Huh.

The man leading the team has blonde hair and some scruff growing on his face. She’s never seen him before in her life. She’s not sure if it’s better or worse that she’s not up against Ross. On the one hand, she’s not about to open fire on a US General. On the other hand, she doesn’t like unknowns.

He has a team of four with him, and they spread out, searching each cubicle one by one, but their target is clearly the castle. 

“You can make this easy for yourself,” the leader says. “Come with us. No need to get green.”

Clara waits until they’ve gone by her, until there are five backs in her sight, and she fires her first arrow. 

The leader goes down first, because she’s not stupid. She hits the guy next to him before the team turns around, shouting and pointing their guns at her hiding spot. She rolls out of the way of the bullets and lets herself fall through the ceiling. 

She’s up on her feet in a second, arrow drawn and fired before she dives and rolls again. She hears another body go down. Two more left. 

She’s lost her element of surprise, which isn’t good. They have two people to her one. Also not good. But she’s done better with worse, and she can do this now, too. She misses having Coulson in her ear. She misses having a team.

One of the guys has an automatic weapon and just starts firing. She has to stay low, on her stomach, to avoid the spray of bullets, and it’s really damn hard to shoot a bow like that. 

She knows the one guy is pinning her so his friend can pick her off, but there are only two directions he can come from.

She picks the right one.

He rounds the corner, gun first, and she waits until she sees his foot to put her arrow in it. But the foot is a long way from the heart, and the guy goes down to his knees but isn’t down for the count yet.

He fires off two shots, both missing, but when she dodges, she gets clipped by the other guy. Fucking other guy. She grunts but manages not to scream. She’ll count that as a win.

“I know I hit you,” the man taunts. He sounds like he’s just on the other side of the cubicle wall. “Want me to put you out of your misery?”

She wants him to keep talking. It helps cover her harsh breathing and the sound of her crawling across the floor. He hit her in the shoulder, which makes crawling a bitch, and means drawing her bow is going to hurt even more.

She wonders if an arrow can rip through the cubicle wall as easily as a bullet.

Guess there’s only way to find out.

She guesses where the man is and fires. She bites the collar of her shirt to muffle the sound she makes when she has to pull the string back.

There’s a satisfying thud and then an even more satisfying, “A fucking arrow?” and Clara presses her stomach to the floor and waits until she hears a body hit the floor to move again. 

She collects her arrows and then goes to the bathroom, knocking twice. “It’s me. You can come out now.”

Her backpack is in the bathroom with him, and she needs to get her med kit out. The bullet was a through and through, but she needs to get her shoulder wrapped before they move on. And they do need to move on. If Ross wasn’t with this team, does that mean there’s another one headed their way?

She knocks again. “Bruce?”

There a click then the door pushes open.

He’s standing there, small in his oversized shirt, his backpack slung over one shoulder. She sees hers sitting under the sink.

“I need my pack,” she says. Quick field dressing and then they need to move again.

Bruce is staring at her shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I need my pack. Med kit.”

He looks beyond her, blanching at the bodies on the ground.

“Not dead,” she reminds him, “but they will wake up so we need to get out of here.”

“I -” his hands tremble on his pack straps.

“No,” she says.

His veins pulse under his skin. She can see the green flush rise, then fall.

“No,” she repeats, because she did not just survive being shot at to be crushed by the Hulk. “Don’t do this to me.”

He grits his teeth, but she can see his fingers swell up then go back to normal. He’s fighting it, but she’s not sure he’s going to win.

“Come on, Bruce,” she says, “Look at me. You can fight this. Stay will me. I need you to stay with me.”

He shakes his head, like he’s saying he can’t or maybe he’s trying to fight, but it’s not enough. It’s not going to be enough.

He’s going to change, and it’s not going to matter that she got shot in the shoulder, because she’s going to get smushed. She takes a deep breath. It won’t help if they  _ both  _ lose it. She’s got a quiver of arrows on her back. She’s not sure the paralytic will work on him and if it doesn’t, stabbing him will piss him off. And if it does work, she has no idea how the hell she’ll get him out of here.

Which means she needs to help him get under control.

What was it he told her when she was in her tree? Why did the Hulk come out? To protect him, right?

“Hey,” she says, holding her hand out to him, palm up. She doesn’t want to grab him. “You don’t need the Hulk. We’re safe, okay? I’ll protect you. That’s  _ my _ job right now. Come on, Bruce, stay with me.  _ Trust _ me. I can do this, okay. There’s no one left to hurt you. I need you to calm down and patch me up so we can get out of here. Can you do that? Tony told me you’re a doctor. Can you -”

She cuts off abruptly when Bruce clasps her hand. His hand is warm in hers, and she can’t feel a tremble left in him.

“I’m here,” he says. His voice sounds rusty, like he scraped it all up. “I’m - I should be good now.”

“Good,” Clara says, not even trying to hide her relief. “I need my bag.”

“Right.” He grabs it from under the sink and hands it over. “You want help wrapping that? Or were you just trying to talk me down?”

“I can do it myself,” she says, “but it’s easier with help.”

His hands are much steadier than hers, and he carefully wraps her shoulder for her. He makes her a sling as well and they make their way out of the office. They go back to the roof, because emergency vehicles have answered the fire alarm, and she looks at him and then looks back at the parking garage.

“You can’t,” he says.

“Is that a dare?”

She gets a running start and jumps, hitting the second level of the parking garage with a muffled scream. Her shoulder is  _ on fire _ , and she’s pretty sure there are tears in her eyes, but that’s a normal human reaction, she’s not  _ crying _ , and -

“I think you should let me drive,” Bruce says.

“Good plan,” she says. “Need me to get us a car?”

“Yeah.”

She finds them a car and they get back on the road. She tips her head back against the headrest and focuses on breathing. Now that they’re relatively safe, now that the adrenaline of the fight is beginning to ebb, all she’s got is pain.

“You did good back there,” she says.

“Please don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. Look, I’ve been training to do this for 10 years. Some days, I’m even pretty damn good at my job. I’m sure they don’t train you for these things in college.”

“No,” he says.

“So good fucking job.” She wants to close her eyes. Instead, she forces herself to check the mirrors, make sure they don’t have any more visitors.

“Thanks,” he says. 

She rummages through her backpack one-handed. She needs to eat something before she starts to crash. She can’t afford to crash yet. They’re not out of the woods, not safe until they’re on the plane with Coulson. Or, whoever Coulson sends. 

She really hopes Coulson comes himself. 

It’s probably an issue that she it hasn’t even been a week without her handler, and she’s going through withdrawal.

“You can sleep if you need to,” Bruce tells her, a couple hours into their drive. “I don’t think we’re being followed.”

“No rest until we’re safe. Speaking of,” she looks over at him, “You coming home with me or what? No pressure, but we should probably part ways soon if you’re not. I’ll keep this car to keep the attention off anyone who might have watched us leave Arapongas, but I’ll get you a new one.”

“You’re serious,” he says. “You’d let me leave. I’m pretty sure I’m on SHIELD’s Most Wanted list.”

“One, I’m on leave right now,” she says. He doesn’t smile. “Two, I gave the Black Widow a choice. Come in to SHIELD or keep running. She chose to come in, because she was tired of running, because she knew eventually what she was running from was going to catch up with her, and she didn’t want to face it alone. It’s not the same situation, but it’s the same options. I believe in choice.”

“SHIELD gave you a choice?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah. Come in or keep living on the streets. Not that hard a choice. It’s more complicated for you.”

“Tony needs my help,” Bruce says. “And SHIELD has to be better than Ross.”

“In my biased opinion? Yes.”

“Well,” Bruce says. “Only three more hours to the airport.”

“You drive fucking slow,” she tells him.

“I’m very cautious about road rage,” he says.

It takes her a moment to see the smile tugging at his lips. He’s  _ joking _ . About  _ The Hulk _ .

“And you have a terrible sense of humor,” she adds.

She promptly makes herself a liar by laughing.

~*~

They’re both exhausted by the time they reach the airport, but Clara still makes Bruce park a few blocks away and then they navigate the streets in the dark, twisting and turning until Clara’s certain no one’s following them. 

Of course, there’s every chance that there’s a trap waiting for them in the airport, but Clara trusts SHIELD to handle any problems there. 

“Last chance to run,” Clara tells Bruce as they enter the airport.

He tugs his baseball cap lower, to completely shield him from any cameras, and says, “I’m tired of running.”

There’s a good crowd in the airport even with the late hour, and she and Bruce blend in, just as tired and ragged as everyone around them. 

Well, everyone but the asshole in a fresh-pressed suit that’s waiting for them next to the coffee kiosk.

Clara’s heart soars, and she forgets about how tired she is, and she runs towards him, wrapping Coulson up in a one-armed hug that jars her shoulder, but she doesn’t even care, because Coulson’s here, and Coulson means everything’s going to be okay.

“Can’t even yell at me,” she says, squeezing him as tight as she dares, “cause I’m not your agent right now.”

Coulson hugs her back. “Glad to see you safe.” When she steps back, he taps the sling and frowns. 

“I’ll tell you about it on the plane,” she says. She looks over her shoulder to see Bruce, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders hunched, but watching them. “Wanna meet my friend Bruce?”

“Agent Coulson,” Coulson greets, approaching Bruce and holding out a hand. “Please don’t hug me.”

“I won’t,” Bruce promises. He shakes Coulson’s hand. “Uh, sorry if any of this was an inconvenience for you.”

“Snatching an asset from underneath the nose of the military and then sneaking out of a South American country?” Coulson asks. “Child’s play. Let’s get you through security and on our jet before we give Ross enough time to catch up to us.”

“We detained one team on the way,” Clara says as they go to security. “Are there more?”

“We don’t know,” Coulson says.

He gives them each a passport and a plane ticket. 

“Jeff Richards?” Bruce asks.

“Just until we clear security,” Coulson says. 

They get through security without a problem, and Coulson leads them away from the main terminals to a smaller hallway.

“There isn’t any food in this hallway,” Clara whines.

“There is, however, a plane for us,” Coulson says. 

He pushes open a door that leads outside then down a flight of stairs. The plane that’s waiting for them is little, nothing like a quinjet and really nothing like Tony’s jet.

“The Stark plane had stripper poles,” Clara says as they board. “He wouldn’t let me fly it, though.”

“You’re not flying this one either,” Coulson says. “You’re going to debrief, then sleep. Dr. Banner, you have any problems with planes?”

Bruce shakes his head. “I might try to sleep too. It’s been a long day. But I can look at Clara’s shoulder again first.”

“Shoulder’s fine,” Clara says, even as it throbs, reminding her that she got shot today. “Just a flesh wound.”

“She got shot,” Bruce says. “We were followed from the safehouse.”

“I got pictures,” Clara says, digging for the SHIELD phone. “Whole team. Dunno if that’s useful or not.”

“I imagine we’ll see them again,” Coulson says. “You’re going straight to medical when we land.”

There are no couches on this plane, and Coulson sits next to her even though there are a least six more empty seats. 

“Medical?” she asks, eyes too heavy to be ignored now that she’s safe. “Not a hospital?”

“Why would we send you to a hospital?” Coulson asks.

“Not a SHIELD agent,” she slurs. “Remember?”

Coulson takes off his suit jacket and balls it up for her to use as a pillow. “Go to sleep, Agent Barton. We’ll talk about it when you wake up.”

“Debrief,” she says, but she’s already fading.

“It can wait,” Coulson promises.

She sleeps. 

~*~

When she wakes up in medical, her SHIELD ID is sitting next to an unopened Jello cup. 

She rubs her eyes three times to make sure she’s not hallucinating - the good drugs do that to you sometimes. She pinches herself for good measure.

Her ID’s still there.

“Is this a joke?” she asks.

“No,” Coulson tells her, sitting in his usual chair by her bed.

It says a lot about her life that her handler has a usual chair for when she’s in medical.

“I was suspended,” she says. She still takes her card off the little table in case someone tries to come in and snatch it. “I thought I was going to get fired.”

“While on  _ leave _ ,” Coulson says, “you found and recruited one of SHIELD’s Most Wanted. I told the Director you deserved a commendation. He reinstated you early instead. And reassigned you.”

Ah, Clara thinks. That’s the catch.

“Where?” she asks.

“New York City.”

Coulson sets his tablet aside and gives her his full attention. She realizes for the first time that he’s not wearing a tie. And the first button of his shirt is undone. For Coulson, that’s almost casual. 

“Cutting you off from SHIELD wasn’t a good decision,” Coulson says. He holds a hand up to forestall any of her protests, “You’re going to be on light duty, and you’re going to continue to be a part of SHIELD, because SHIELD is your home, but while in New York, I want you to begin to branch out.”

“I don’t understand.”

Coulson looks sad. “SHIELD is your home, but it shouldn’t be your entire life. I’ve put together a packet of apartment listings for you to look through. This is a suggestion, not an order, but I think it would be good for you to live off base.”

She doesn’t know how to live off base. Well, she knows how to live while on a mission, but she’s pretty sure that’s not what Coulson means.

“I’m still an agent, though?” she asks, feeling off balance for reasons she can’t name.

“Yes.”

“What am I going to do in New York?”

“First, you’re going to heal up,” Coulson tells her, nodding at her arm. “Second, we need a liaison between Tony Stark and SHIELD, and you’re the only person he’ll talk to. Third, you’re going to therapy.”

She groans. “This was all you, wasn’t it? You know exactly how to punish me.”

“Yes,” Coulson says, dry. “Helping you heal and making sure you have friends. Definitely punishment.”

Clara laughs. “You coming to New York too, sir?”

“Not at the moment,” he says. “I’m involved in a search and rescue of my own. If it’s successful then I believe we’ll see more of each other.”

Clara’s immediately worried. “Natasha?”

“Someone else,” he promises. “It’s classified. Do you need help opening your Jello?”

“This arm injury is going to suck, isn’t it?”

Coulson smiles and opens her Jello for her.


	5. Chapter 5

Clara makes appointments to look at the first two apartment buildings on Coulson’s list, but she hates them, and she refuses to look at the others. They’re too fancy, too clean, too not her. She’s sure Dr. Suresh has something to say about her looking for a more rundown building, about how it represents her regressing to her past or subconsciously denying herself nice things for her perceived sins or some shit like that, but she doesn’t care.

She finds an apartment all on her own, a two bedroom (maybe Natasha will move in when she comes back), in a building that has definitely seen better days but isn’t like condemned or anything. The DIY shows that Madison likes would say it has character. 

Clara doesn’t like things that are too perfect. She likes a few flaws - things she can improve on - and this place is perfect.

Besides, when she moved in, all of her neighbors made themselves scarce when they saw her lugging boxes up the stairs but reappeared once the car was unloaded to invite her to a rooftop barbecue. 

“Oh shit,” a guy in a dirty white tank top and low riding jeans says when she comes up to the roof, hot dog rolls clutched in her good hand. “You’re like, hurt and shit. We totally should’ve helped you carry boxes.”

“You don’t know me,” Clara says, “Why would you help me?”

“Oh good,” the woman next to him breathes. She’s got a colorful scarf tied around her head. “I was worried you were going to be some idealistic schmuck here to be the next Taylor Swift or something. But you understand the city.”

Clara laughs. She definitely understands this city. 

“Clara,” she introduces, holding her hand out to the woman.

“Rachel,” the woman says. “I live in 2A. If you see two kids running around causing trouble, they’re probably mine. Ruth and Isabella. They’re with their dad on the weekends.”

“Ah,” Clara says. “It’s just me. In 2E.”

“Isn’t that a double?” A new woman asks, coming up on Clara’s other side. “I’m Lucy, by the way.”

“It is,” Clara says. She doesn’t fight her instincts, takes a step back to get some more space even if it might be rude. “My friend’s on an extended vacation. I’m hoping she’ll move in when she comes back.”

“Friend?” Lucy asks. She studies Clara’s hair, still cut short, and shrugs. “Okay. What happened to the arm?”

“Shot,” Clara says, figuring it’s best to just get that out there.

Everyone accepts that and doesn’t ask any more questions.

Later, once they all have food, Wyatt - the one with the dirty tank top - pulls her aside to tell her he’s got a good dealer, one who doesn’t let stuff like that happen. She thanks him and then goes and gets another hot dog. 

~*~

“I don’t like shrinks,” Clara says when she shows up to the appointment Coulson set up for her.

She’s a little surprised it’s not on the SHIELD base but at the local VA, but a head doctor is a head doctor, and she doesn’t like them.

The man - Sam Wilson - doesn’t look surprised either that she’s ten minutes late or apparently determined to hate him on sight.

He just smiles and reaches a hand out. “Sam Wilson.”

She shakes it with a scowl. “Clara Barton.”

“I’m not a shrink,” Sam tells her, sitting back down. “I’m a group counselor for vets, and I occasionally do one-on-one work.”

“I’m not a vet,” Clara says. “And you’re probably not even allowed to listen to half the shit I’ve been through.”

Sam sighs at this. “Actually, I am. I’m pretty sure it’s yet another attempt by Agent Coulson to recruit me, but I have been cleared to speak to you about you and your experiences. Of course, that will require your participation.”

“You’re nothing like Dr. Suresh,” she says. “Are you even a doctor?”

“Nope.” He leans back in his chair. “You ready to run yet?”

“I don’t get it,” she says.

“I’m just someone to talk to,” he says. “Your choice whether or not you talk. If you’d like, I can find a couch and ask you about your mother.”

She scowls.

“Or, you could tell me why your arm’s in a sling. That must be a fun story.”

“Maybe I tripped over a laundry basket,” she says.

“I very much doubt that,” he says. “But we can play two truths and a lie if you’d like that better. Or two lies and a truth. You’ve already used one lie on the laundry basket. Try and make the next one a little more convincing.”

“I partnered with Tony Stark to track down Bruce Banner only to find out that the man who put us on Banner’s trail was hunting him himself, and I got shot in the ensuing mess.”

“Hmm,” Wilson says, considering, “Okay, scenario three.”

“Drugs,” she says, “My new neighbor gave his dealer the wrong apartment number, and I didn’t react well to opening my door to have a gun trained on me. Put the drug dealer behind bars and got a souvenir.”

She delivers the story without a single tell. Well, she tried. She’s gotten out of practice since Natasha went away. She  _ hopes _ she delivered the story without a single tell. 

“Both sound solid,” he says, “but you don’t look in enough pain for that to be a recent injury so I’m going with scenario number two. What was working with Tony Stark like?”

“Impressive,” she says. “You, not Tony. He’s a nightmare.”

Wilson laughs. “I kind of get that impression from the TV.”

“He has stripper poles on his personal jet.”

“I’m not even a little bit surprised.”

Wilson doesn’t ask any probing questions, just listens to her tell the story of searching for and then finding Bruce Banner. He doesn’t call her out on parts she obviously skipped or press her for details on why she’s wary of the Hulk, just listens.

By the end, Clara’s not sure whether he’s supposed to be her therapist or her friend.

She calls Coulson to find out. 

“Did you hire me a friend or a therapist?” she asks.

“He’s someone to talk to in a professional capacity,” Coulson says.

“He’s nothing like Dr. Suresh.”

“I figured that would increase the chances of you willingly seeing him.”

It’s a good point. “Thank you, sir.”

“Always,” he says.

~*~

Clara goes into SHIELD three times a week for light training and physical therapy. It leaves her a lot of free time, and after three days of hunting for the perfect furniture for her apartment she realizes she’s going to need to find something to do with all that time.

The first thing she does is track down Peter Parker. 

It’s actually pretty easy, and she wonders who at SHIELD to talk to about her concerns over personal privacy as she walks up to the Parker residence.

She knocks and then wonders if maybe this wasn’t the best idea when a middle-aged woman comes to the door. She thought creeping around Midtown High wasn’t a good idea, but she’d forgotten that teenager means guardians and -

Clara holds up the flowers she brought. “Peter told me his uncle got shot.”

The woman on the other side of the screen door looks from the flowers, to Clara, to Clara’s sling, and sighs before opening the door. “Peter’s on his way home from school, but that means at least an hour at the skatepark. Thank you for the flowers.”

Clara shugs. She looked it up on the internet. It’s a thing people do.

“Who’s at the door?” a man shouts from the other room.

The woman shakes her head and leads Clara through the kitchen to the living room. There’s a man lying on the couch - Clara assumes this is the uncle - in his bathrobe. It’s parted, showing the bandaging on his chest.

“This nice young woman brought you flowers,” the woman says. “She’s a friend of Peter’s.”

“You’re a little old for high school,” the man says.

“I am,” Clara says. “Sorry you got shot.”

The man laughs, wincing a little as it jars his injuries. “So am I.”

The woman comes back with a vase for the flowers and sets them on the table next to the remotes to the TV.

“The internet said daffodils were a good choice,” Clara says. “It said nothing scented, and I tried looking up flowers to give people who got shot, but I just got a bunch of cases where guys with the last name Flowers got shot so,” she shrugs, “hope they work.”

“It was very sweet of you,” the woman says. “Can I get you something to drink while you wait?”

“Oh, I don’t need to wait,” she says. “I don’t want to bother you.”

“Nonsense,” the man says. “Peter’ll get here soon enough. And we’ve always got space at the table for one more.”

“What?” Clara asks. “No, you don’t have to feed me.”

“Of course we do,” the woman says. “Make yourself at home. It’s no trouble.”

And Clara, who has been living on various takeout since she got to New York, isn’t really going to say no to a home cooked meal.

“Besides,” the woman says, “Ben’s always excited to find new people to tell his boring stories to.”

“They’re not boring!” Ben calls after the woman as she goes to the kitchen.

She just laughs.

“They’re not boring,” Ben tells Clara. “You a fan of bowling?”

By the time Peter gets home, Clara’s heard all about Ben’s bowling career and agreed to go bowling with him once he gets better because ‘his family doesn’t appreciate what a great sport it is’. 

“Uncle Ben?” Peter calls as the door slams behind him. “Aunt May? I’m home!”

“I think China knows you’re home,” Ben grumbles.

Peter wanders into the living room, skateboard tucked under his arm, smile on his face, but it falls the minute he sees Clara. “What happened to you?”

“Got shot,” she says.

“Lot of that going around,” Ben says.

Peter looks like he doesn’t know which of them to scold first.

“Hospital squeezing you for all you’re worth?” Ben asks.

“Nah, I’ve got good insurance,” Clara says.

Peter’s mouth falls open. “You were fine! Like two weeks ago! I saw you. And you were not shot. You were - you were with Tony Stark! Do you work with Iron Man? Oh man, you totally got shot being a superhero.”

“I’m not a superhero,” Clara says.

“Forgive him,” May says, joining them in the living room, “First there was Iron Man and now that that Spiderman is running about, Peter thinks everyone’s a superhero.”

“I work in the security business,” Clara says.

It’s pretty obvious no one in the room believes her. 

“Who shot you?” Peter asks, something desperate and a little hard in his voice. “Is he still out there?”

“There’s nothing for you to worry about,” Clara tells him. And then, “Spiderman?”

“You haven’t heard of Spiderman?” Peter asks.

“Here we go,” Ben groans. 

“I just moved up here from DC,” Clara says. 

“So like, Iron Man is for the big stuff,” Peter says. “You know, giant robots and supervillains. Spiderman’s here for the people.”

“He’s a vigilante,” Ben says. “He’s hunting down muggers.”

“Hunting is a strong term,” Peter says.

“Huh,” Clara says. “Whole new world.”

“Dinner’s ready,” May tells them. “Uh, Peter’s friend, I hope you like meatloaf.”

“My name’s Clara,” she says. “And I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”

“You’ve never had meatloaf?” Peter asks.

“You’re in for a treat,” Ben says.

Peter scrambles over to help Ben get off the couch. Clara’s not sure whether to help them get into the kitchen or not so she just goes and sits down. 

“Oh,” she says when May pulls the dish out of the oven. “In the cafeteria we call it mystery meat. It’s good.”

“It’s hamburger,” May says, “with onions and peppers. No mystery here.”

“You  _ like _ cafeteria food?” Peter asks, incredulous.

Clara shrugs. “Food’s food.”

“So you’ve just moved up here?” May asks as she serves everyone. 

“Work transfer,” Clara answers. “Still learning my way around the city. Did you know that you can call places and they bring food to you? It’s the best.”

“You mean takeout?” Peter asks.

Next to him, May looks alarmed.

“Yeah.” Clara wiggles her fork and breaks her meatloaf into bite-sized pieces. “I mean, I knew you could call for pizza, but you can do it for all sorts of other things too.” She takes a bite of the meatloaf. “This is really good, by the way.”

“I’ll send the leftovers home with you,” May says.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ben smile, relieved.

“You don’t need to do that,” Clara says. “I can feed myself. I mean, I can call people to make food for me. And I can do anything that uses the microwave. Breakfast burritos are basically the best.”

“I’m sending it home with you,” May tells her, looking a little horrified.

“Okay. Thanks.”

~*~

Clara sets up an alert for Spiderman now that she knows who he is. According to the few videos she finds on Google, he’s a guy in a blue and red bodysuit who swings around the city fighting petty crime. It’s what Peter told her, minus the spandex, and she wonders how he gets the webbing. It has to be some kind of invention.

He’s pretty bendy too, and Clara wonders if Iron Man had come out while she was at the circus if she would’ve tried to fashion herself into a superhero. The Amazing Hawkeye, running around the big city in a purple catsuit and a bow on her back.

It’s probably for the best that Iron Man wasn’t a thing when she was a kid.

“You’re inspiring the youth,” she tells Tony, dropping a copy of  _ The Daily Bugle _ on his lap.

It’s her first meeting with him since coming to New York, put off until she had an apartment and was settled, because she knew he’d try to offer her a place in his Tower. He actually offered her a suite in his mansion, but she’d turned him down, because she has a place of her own.

Besides, she still has nightmares about Malibu. 

Tony looks at the front cover, a picture of Spiderman swinging through the city.

“At least Peter’s stopped taking pictures of me,” Tony says. “And what makes you think Spiderman’s a kid?”

Clara rolls her eyes. “He calls himself The Amazing Spiderman. Only kids call themselves amazing anything.”

“You think he’s actually part spider?” Bruce asks meandering into the room.

He looks better than the last time she saw him. For one, he looks like he’s gotten a few good nights of sleep and a few solid meals in him. Plus, he’s no longer fleeing for his life, which always makes people a bit more relaxed.

“I was going to ask you that,” Clara says. “Could spiderwebs be strong enough to do what he does?”

“Doubtful,” Bruce says. “You could engineer a substance, but it wouldn't be an actual web.”

“Can we rewind to the part where you think there are people with spider DNA running around?” Tony asks.

Clara rubs the bite scar on her hand. “Oscorp has a building in New York, right?”

Tony looks even more interested. “Yes. Are you saying they do shady things?”

Clara’s going to have to keep a close eye on Oscorp while she’s here. And try to find this Spiderman to have a few words with him. This probably isn’t what Coulson meant by telling her to relax until she’s out of her sling, but everyone’s got to have a hobby.

“How’s saving your life going?” Clara asks.

“We’re making progress,” Bruce says. “I’m optimistic.”

“We’re inventing a whole new element,” Tony says. “I’m trying to convince Brucie here to co-write an article on the discovery.”

_ Brucie _ , Clara mouths. 

Bruce shrugs. “What Tony doesn’t seem to understand is that co-writing an article defeats the purpose of lying low.”

“I don’t think he understands the concept of lying low,” Clara says.

Tony pouts. “You come into my home, insult my lifestyle - hey, are you staying for dinner?”

“What’re you having?”

Tony looks over at Bruce. “Indian tonight?”

“Sure.”

Tony looks back at her. “Indian?”

“Okay,” she says. “I haven’t tried that yet.”

~*~

When she gets to Wilson’s office for their fourth meeting, he’s got two muffins on his desk. 

“Is it the sling?” Clara asks sitting down. She takes the blueberry muffin. The other one has looks like it might be cranberry, and she doesn’t know if she’ll like cranberry muffins. Better to be safe.

“Is what the sling?”

“People keep feeding me,” she says.

“Is that new for you?” 

She carefully peels the wrapper off the muffin, the task made more difficult by only having one hand to use. Wilson doesn’t offer to help. She’s glad, it means she doesn’t have to say no. It’s annoying only having the use of one arm, but she’s making do. She doesn’t need help. Doesn’t want it, either.

“We didn’t have a lot growing up,” Clara says. “And this is starting to sound like therapy.”

“Just two people talking,” Wilson tells her. “And you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

She knows. Maybe that’s why she decides to tell him more. “Barney was a boy and older than me, so whatever extra food we had, he got. And in the circus nobody was giving anybody anything. If you didn’t eat fast enough, your food would get snatched from you. So yeah, people giving me food is new. Unless you count the SHIELD cafeteria.”

“Do you?”

“Not really. I mean, I work for them so it’s their job to feed me, right? So I can be at my best?”

“That’s how the air force did it,” Wilson says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if SHIELD was similar. How are you doing now that you’re not living on base?”

“Takeout is the best,” Clara says. “And sometimes there are cookouts on the roof of my apartment. And I eat at the Parkers’ once a week, and May always sends me home with leftovers.”

“You don’t cook anything yourself?”

“I microwave things.”

Wilson winces. “Now  _ I  _ want to feed you, and I’m not even a good cook.”

“So it’s not the sling,” she says. 

“No, it’s just you.”

“Huh,” she says.

She takes a giant bite of her muffin.

~*~

It takes her three nights, but she finally manages to get face to face with Spiderman. She’s gotten herself a police scanner, and has spent her nights going to crime scenes she thinks Spiderman might be at. She finally found one, but she was too late, the police there cutting a man down from where he’d been pinned against a wall with the Spiderman webbing.

On her way back to her apartment, she hears the familiar whistle that means some guy is harassing someone.

Clara’s on her own, and she’s got an arm in a sling, but she’s confident she can take out some creep on the street. She follows the sound of the man - talking now instead of just whistling - and she’s about to round the corner when she hears something that makes her pause.

“Street harassment? Really?” a male voice asks. “Don’t you have better things to do with your night?”

“It’s the Spiderkid,” the creeper says.

A young woman hurries around the corner, running straight into Clara and dropping her purse. Her eyes go wide and she gets three steps back before Clara says, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She picks up the woman’s purse and hands it over.

“You alright?”

The woman nods. “Spiderman saved me. I mean, I’ve got pepper spray, but I don’t want to have to use it. Sometimes it just makes them angrier.”

“You need someone to walk with you?” Clara asks.

She shakes her head. “I’m almost home.”

“Alright,” Clara says. “Have a good night.”

She watches the woman until she’s out of sight and then turns into the alleyway where the creep has a patch of webbing over his mouth, and Spiderman is perched on a fire escape watching him.

“Can’t mouth off when you can’t talk,” Spiderman says.

“Nice,” Clara says.

Spiderman startles, falls off his perch.

“Not so nice,” Clara says.

He scrambles to his feet, brushes off his knees. “You caught me off guard.”

“Come on,” Clara says. “Take a walk with me.”

“Uh,” Spiderman says.

Clara cradles her injured shoulder. “I’m hurt. What if someone comes after me? I won’t be able to defend myself.”

Creeper says something that’s muffled by the webbing. She kicks the back of his knees, sending him to the ground.

“No one asked your opinion,” she says.

“Uh,” Spiderman says again.

Clara starts walking away. She gets a few feet ahead of him before he runs to catch up.

“So, Junior,” she says, “Nice work back there.”

“Junior?” He squawks.

“I know the Black Widow,” she says. “She’s kind of got the market on spider names. Which makes you Junior. Anyways, I like the approach. I’m a fan of non-fatal incapacitation.” 

“...Okay?”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, though. What do you know about Oscorp?”

Spiderman trips over his feet. “Oscorp?”

She’s definitely going to have to do some investigating. She rubs the bite mark on her hand and wonders if she’s going to have to take Spiderman down at some point. She really hopes not. She’s not sure she buys into all this superhero crap, but ordinary people finding ways to make their city a better place? She’s into that. 

“They do science!” Spiderman says. “You know, like research and medicine and stuff like that.”

“Stuff like cross-species genetics?” she asks.

Spiderman doesn’t duck and walks head first into a bus stop sign. How he manages to pass himself off as a superhero she has no idea. 

“It’s not what you think,” he says.

“Oscorp hasn’t moved on from animal experimentation and onto human experimentation?”

“Oscorp’s experimenting on animals?”

“Isn’t that what scientists do?” Clara asks. 

“...I guess.”

“Please don’t go on a free the animals campaign,” Clara says. “Taking on Oscorp isn’t a good idea. Though I guess that answers the question of whether or not you’re working for them.”

“You thought I was working for Oscorp?”

“Let’s not rehash this.”

Clara rubs her shoulder. It’s about time to ice it then to go bed. 

“Alright,” she says. “Nice chat. Have a good night.”

“Wait!” Spiderman says. Once he has her attention he ducks his head, a little embarrassed. “I can walk you home?”

Clara laughs and pats his cheek. “Thanks, Junior, but I’m good. And I don’t think I want you knowing where I live.”

“I help people,” he says.

“And I don’t trust them. See you around.”

She takes a circuitous route back to her apartment, but there’s no sign that Spiderman’s following her. She’s not sure whether that makes him smart or is proof that he’s as young as she thinks he is.


	6. Chapter 6

“I met Spiderman,” Clara tells Coulson during their weekly check-in.

“Should we recruit him?”

“He’s a kid,” Clara says. She doesn’t say she was a kid when SHIELD brought her in. 

“You know his identity?”

“No, but there are clues. He’s a teenager. I think there was some sort of accident. Oscorp’s involved, but I don’t know how yet.”

“Cross-species genetics,” Coulson says. He sounds tired. “We’ll get someone looking into them. We don’t need them breeding an army.”

Clara tucks the phone between her ear and her shoulder and rummages around her fridge for leftovers. She grabs a carton of Chinese, sniffs it to make sure it’s still good, and puts it on the counter.

She’s getting some grapes as well when Coulson asks, “Why were you looking into Spiderman?”

“I’ve been on the wrong end of Oscorp’s experiments,” she reminds him. She takes her food over to her couch. “At least Spiderman’s got a mask covering his face. No piranha teeth there.”

She pops a few grapes into her mouth and frowns when she hears what sounds like waves crashing against something - the shore? a boat? “Are you near water?”

“Sometimes I forget your hearing’s almost as good as your eyesight.”

Deflection. Meaning she asked a question he can’t answer. 

“You hear from Natasha recently?”

“She made her check-in. She says she’s beginning the final stage.”

Which could mean a week left, could mean another year.

“You want me looking into Oscorp?” Clara asks.

“No. I want you healing. You’re not very good at sitting still.”

“Only when I’m in a nest,” she says. Because when she’s got a bow in her hands, everything settles. Everything goes quiet and still in a way that she can’t capture otherwise. 

“How are Stark and Banner?” Coulson asks.

“They figured out how to counter the palladium poisoning. Which means Tony’s decided it’s time to help Bruce. He’s designing some sort of Hulk-proof place where Bruce can practice control. Bruce is still trying to figure out a cure. Science is boring. I need something to  _ do _ .”

“How’s your new friend Peter?”

“He’s not my friend. He’s in high school. And he’s fine. Has all these bruises he’s hiding from his aunt and uncle. I think he’s getting beat up at school.”

“You can anonymously report your suspicions to the school,” Coulson says.

It’s his way of saying she’s not allowed to go stalk Peter at school and then beat the bullies up herself. She wasn’t going to do that. She has a better plan.

~*~

“Come on, kid,” she tells Peter when he comes out of school, riding his skateboard.

He skids to a stop, kicks his skateboard up into his hand. “Huh?”

“Where do you hang out where no one will bother you?”

“Besides the roof of my house?”

“Too dangerous,” she says.

Peter gives her a weird look, but shrugs and brings her out to an abandoned warehouse that overlooks the water. There are chains hanging from the ceiling and platforms against the edges of the wall, and enough space in the center of the warehouse to do what Clara wants to do.

“Alright,” Clara says, taking off her sling.

“Should you be doing that?” Peter asks. 

“Just don’t make any sudden movements.”

Peter goes absolutely still.

“That was a joke,” Clara tells him, smiling.

“Oh.” Peter exhales, hands fluttering at his sides. “So, uh, what’re we doing?”

“Self-defense,” she says.

“Uh, okay. Why?”

“Because someone’s hurting you,” she says, “and I’ve been told I’m not allowed to show up at your high school and start throwing punches.”

Peter still looks confused, like he doesn’t understand  _ why _ , and Clara’s gentle as she guides him to the center of the warehouse. 

“I’m just going to teach you a couple emergency moves,” she says. “Like how to get out of a headlock.”

Peter ducks his head, pink blooming on his cheeks.

“And then I’ll teach you one or two offensive moves. Something to deter people from giving you a hard time.”

“You didn’t have a good time in high school?” Peter guesses.

“Didn’t go to high school,” she says.

It feels weird to put him in a headlock with her left arm, but she presses her forearm against his neck and says, “Okay, first thing you want to do is get your neck in the crook of my elbow so you’ve got space to breathe.”

She can feel his pulse, quick as a jackrabbit, as he does what she told him.

“You really didn’t go to high school?” he asks.

“You don’t have the leverage here to get in a good crotch shot or knock your attacker’s feet out from under them so you need to use momentum. You’re going to bend over and flip me over you and onto my back.”

“What,” Peter says.

She walks him through it, patient, and the first time he tries, he’s not putting any effort into it, and he doesn’t even manage to get her up on her tiptoes let alone throw her. 

“You like getting beat up?” she asks.

“You’re a girl!”

Clara puts enough pressure on his throat to make his next few breaths difficult. She eases up as soon as she’s confident she made her point. “Girl or not, I can hurt you. Now, are you gonna stop me or what?”

He puts more effort into his next try.

By his fifth, he’s able to get break her hold, and slam her on her back on the concrete floor. She grunts, breath momentarily knocked out of her, on impact, and Peter gasps and covers his mouth.

“I’m so sorry. I’m - are you okay? Do you need an ice pack? Please don’t kill me. Oh -”

“Relax,” Clara says. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do. And the good news for you is that the punks you go to high school with won’t have the training I do, so it’ll be easier to break their holds.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. He rubs the back of his neck. “I’d probably get suspended for flipping any of them, though. And really, Flash has calmed down a lot recently. Since Uncle Ben almost - since Uncle Ben got hurt.”

“Someone’s giving you those bruises,” Clara says. “We can work on some evasive maneuvers, if you want. If they can’t catch you then they can’t hurt you, and you won’t even need to know how to break a hold.”

“You’re pretty serious about this stuff,” Peter says. “Kids mean to you in school, too?”

“Something like that,” Clara says. “Come on, next lesson.”

~*~

The VA has a gym, not as nice as SHIELD’s, but still decent, and once Clara’s got full mobility back in her arm, she’s totally going to challenge Wilson to a rock climbing competition. For now, though, she has to be satisfied with sitting side by side on the stationary bikes.

After the third time Wilson glances over to compare the distances they’ve gone, she smirks.

“Competitive?” she asks.

“Like you aren’t.”

“Just keeping in shape?” she asks. “Or going back into the Air Force?”

“I’m done with that,” he says, slowing down a bit. “It - I left for a reason. I don’t think there’s a good enough reason left in the world to get me back in.”

Clara recognizes grief when she sees it, and Wilson’s never pushed her to talk about things she wants to avoid so she returns the favor. “There’s this kid I met who’s getting the crap beat out of him at school. I’ve been working with him on how to keep that from happening, but I’m wondering if maybe I should be talking to his school or his aunt and uncle instead. He’s not really a fighter.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“Because if you tell you get hit worse. Because some kids just have targets on their backs. Because teachers aren’t around all the time, and he’s better off learning to protect himself than relying on other people.”

“How bad is it?”

“From what I’ve seen so far, just some bruises. But that’s how it starts. It always gets worse.”

Wilson wipes his face with his sweat towel and looks over at her. “That your experience?”

“Kids didn’t bother me at school,” she says. She had an older brother that made sure they didn’t. It was at home, where Barney wasn’t the biggest or the baddest, that no one could protect her. 

“You could leave an anonymous tip at the school,” he says.

Coulson suggested the same thing but, “He’d just lie about what was going on.”

“Then it seems to me that you’re doing the right thing,” Wilson tells her. “I mean, you’re not teaching him how to conceal a knife in school or anything, are you?”

“No, just some basic hand-to-hand. Why? Should I teach him how to conceal a knife?”

“No. No weapons. Especially not in school.”

“I’m mostly teaching him defensive stuff,” Clara says. “He’s actually pretty good at evasion. He’s just clumsy and usually ends up tripping over his own feet during his escape. He doesn’t  _ want _ to fight. He just wants to be left alone. I wish he could have that.”

“Yeah,” Wilson agrees.

They bike in silence for the rest of their workout.

At the end of it, Wilson tosses his sweat towel in a hamper outside the locker rooms. “You should think about coming to some of the group sessions.”

“Ha,” she says.

“You don’t have to talk,” he says. “You can just listen.”

“My problems aren’t tied to the military,” she says.

“Uh huh,” Wilson tells her. “Just think about it.”

~*~

Clara doesn’t have a lot to do during the day when she’s not needed at SHIELD, because Peter’s at school and she doesn’t really hang out with anyone else. She doesn’t plan on going to any of Wilson’s meetings, because she’s not a veteran, she’s not really all that much like that people he works with, but she needs a reason to not visit Tony so she tells him she has an appointment and then feels like she should actually go.

Things with Tony are okay - he still wants her to be part of his little club, but she’s not a superhero and she already has a job - but he’s not an easy person to socialize with. She’ll check-in with him and Bruce to make sure they haven’t blown anything up in their labs and to make sure Ross hasn’t gotten wind of where Bruce is, but that’s work.

Tony’s idea of fun is too much drinking and too much technobabble. 

Anyways, avoiding Tony’s invitations has become somewhat of an art form, and this particular avoidance ends up with her at the VA, a donut in one hand, cup of tea in the other.

“You didn’t tell me there was food,” she tells Wilson, accusing.

He’s mingling with the group in what is supposedly ‘social time’ and if Clara knew that the meeting didn’t start until ten minutes after the stated time then she probably would’ve skipped social time, donuts or no.

“Go make a friend,” Wilson tells her.

She scowls and finds an empty seat to wait in until the meeting starts. 

She’s not left alone for long. A woman with medium-length black hair sits down next to Clara, a cup of coffee cupped in her hands. She takes a deep inhale of the steam when she sits down, looking like she’s found heaven.

“The best thing about this place?” the woman says, “They know how to make a good cup of coffee. Sam says it’s because he drank enough shit overseas, now that he’s back home he’s only drinking the good stuff.”

Clara looks over at Wilson, deep in conversation with two men, and narrows her eyes. “Wilson send you over here?”

“What? Oh, no. This isn’t a charity thing. He doesn’t meddle like that.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I mean, if you want, he’ll help you connect with people, but he believes everyone’s recovery is different and they should take it at their own pace. I’m Jennifer, by the way.”

Clara’s still not convinced this isn’t some set up by Wilson, but she’ll be rude to him about it later. She feels bad being rude to the woman. “Clara.”

The woman nods, her hair coming untucked from behind her ears and falling in her face. She makes an irritated sound and pushes it back. “I told myself I wasn’t going to have short hair ever again, but it’s such a pain in the ass to grow back.”

Clara touches her own hair, still short but not as short as Jennifer probably had to have hers. “Mine hasn’t been long enough to get in my eyes since I was a teenager.”

Since she chopped it off with a knife in front of Garrett. 

Clara looks around. “You been to a bunch of these?”

“Yeah.” She sighs. “I thought I didn’t need them, then thought I’d just go until I outgrew them. I’m getting the impression you never do. My therapist tells me to stop thinking that there’s an end to recovery, but that’s just not how my brain works, you know?”

“Only end there is is death,” Clara says. “Unless you believe in an afterlife or whatever.”

“You don’t?”

“Fuck, no.”

Once she’s dead, she wants to be dead, full stop. No lingering spirits, no heaven, no hell. Once she’s dead she wants to be gone. It’s both a terrifying and comforting thought.

“My mom’s been dragging me to church ever since I got back,” Jennifer says. “After watching people blow themselves to pieces in the name of their god, I don’t really get a lot of comfort from some guy I don’t know putting his hands on my shoulders and praying for the healing light to touch me. But it’s an easy way to make my mom happy so,” Jennifer shrugs, “I now go to church every Sunday.”

The closest Clara’s gotten to church is the charity dinner they went to every Thanksgiving. Her mom always made sure Clara and Barney were scrubbed as clean as could be and in their best clothes, and then she’d bring the two of them to a church that fed kids like them.

It was the only time she ever got to feel full growing up, and if it meant she had to close her eyes while some guy prayed; well, it was worth it.

“You try bobby pins?” Clara asks.

Jennifer looks confused. “What?”

“For your hair. I don’t really need them, but my partner swears by them. And I mean, I’ll wear them sometimes just because they’re good for picking a lock if you’re in a pinch, and most people don’t confiscate them when they pat you down for weapons.”

“Huh,” Jennifer says. “I haven’t tried those. That could save me a lot of frustration.”

They have to put their conversation on hold, because Wilson starts the meeting. Clara sits and listens to a bunch of people talk about problems she can’t really relate to, and she doesn’t speak at all, not even to tell anyone her name.

No one judges for it.

And at the end of the meeting, Wilson smiles at her.

She takes two donuts home with her.

~*~

Clara eats breakfast and lunch at SHIELD on the days she goes in to see medical, and the day she gets her sling off, she celebrates by eating dessert first. 

She’s been warned that losing the sling doesn’t mean she’s healed all the way and that she still has to take things easy, and she’s going to be careful because she doesn’t want to end up in the sling again.

“Wow,” a woman in civilian clothes says, sitting down at Clara’s table. “Someone’s happy about something.” She tilts her head at the two slices of chocolate cake. “Or really sad. Or just on their period.”

“Who the fuck are you,” Clara says.

People don’t really bother her at SHIELD. They know her reputation, and they know that being injured means she hasn’t been able to spend any time on the shooting range and that a grounded Hawkeye makes for a cranky Hawkeye.

Apparently this woman, in her brightly patterned shirt that shows more cleavage than has probably ever been shown in a SHIELD building, doesn’t know who Clara is. Or has some sort of death wish. 

“Feisty,” the woman says but like it’s a compliment. “I’m Darcy Lewis.”

“She’s my intern,” another woman says, setting her tray down.

This woman, Clara recognizes.

“Dr. Foster?” she confirms.

She’s a slight woman, looking even smaller in an oversized sweater with stretched out cuffs. She smiles when Clara recognizes her. “Dr. Selvig told me you pointed him in the direction of SHIELD. I got my research back thanks to you. And a better facility than I had before.”

“We were working in the back of a beat-up van,” Darcy says. “Anything would’ve been better. I guess I should say thank you too because I get health insurance now. My parents are so excited I’m becoming a real adult or something they’ve forgotten to ask what I actually do for a living. They probably won’t be too excited when I tell them I’m looking for aliens.”

Right, because they were looking into Thor before Clara accidentally disappeared him. She suddenly has a headache. She doesn’t want to talk about New Mexico. And she really doesn’t want any reminders of it.

“We’re doing more than just looking for aliens,” Dr. Foster says, “We’re trying to bridge the gap between our galaxy and another. We’re inventing space travel.”

“A hell of a lot of work for a booty call,” Darcy says, swiping her fries through her mayonnaise.

Dr. Foster blushes. “It’s not a booty call.”

Darcy leans in towards Clara. “We met a hunky alien, but he left before she could get his number. She’s kinda pissed at you about that.”

Her and Fury both.

“I didn’t have sex with him,” Clara says. Just got drunk and helped him reclaim his birthright. 

“Uh, good to know?” Darcy says. “And totally not a concern. Right, Jane?”

Jane’s entire face is red. “Can we got back to talking about science?”

“Agreed,” Clara says.

Dr. Foster looks up at her, hopeful. “You’re a scientist, too?”

Clara laughs. “No, but New Mexico was a shitshow that I try not to think about.”

“Ah.” Dr. Foster pokes at her lunch.

“Ignore her sad pining,” Darcy says. “And we’re not talking about science. That’s work. Right now is lunch, and I fully intend to enjoy it. Oh, Selvig was wondering if you ever found Bruce Banner.”

Clara doesn’t even bother with a glare. “The investigation into the whereabouts of Bruce Banner is classified.”

“Ugh,” Darcy says. “Can you believe that one time I actually thought working for a secret government agency would be cool? But mostly it’s just paperwork and lying to my parents.”

“Welcome to SHIELD,” Clara deadpans.

~*~

Clara’s been cleared for moderate activity, and she’s racing Wilson up the rock wall when her phone dings. She gets to the top, presses the red button to say she got there first and pulls her phone out. It’s a message from Coulson, asking her to come into SHIELD.

“Well,” Clara says, climbing back down the rock face. “Guess I only get to kick your ass three times today.”

“I almost had you that time,” Wilson tells her.

“Uh huh,” she says. “Whatever keeps your ego from crumbling.”

She doesn’t bother with a shower, just puts her equipment away and heads to the base. She doubts she’s being sent on a mission, because she hasn’t been cleared all the way, but she still lets herself hope. Maybe Natasha’s back. Maybe -

“Agent Barton,” Coulson greets, meeting her in the lobby.

“Agent Coulson,” she returns, smile tugging at her lips. “Where’s your tan? I thought you were on a boat.”

“It was a little too cold to be working on my tan,” he says.

That’s more information than he’d give her unless - “I’m getting read into something?”

“Something big,” he says, and he can’t quite keep the smile off his face. 

He refuses to answer any of her questions as he leads her down into the basement of the facility. 

“The Loch Ness Monster?” she asks. “I mean, if aliens are a thing then mythical beasts aren’t out of the question.”

Coulson smiles, entertained by her guesses, but still doesn’t tell her anything until they reach an observation room. The window is dark so Clara can’t see what’s on the other side of it.

“This is all kinds of classified,” he tells her. 

“Does Wilson know?”

Coulson shakes his head. “The Director, me, one doctor, a nurse, and now you.”

Holy shit, Clara thinks. “Alright,” she says. “Wow me.”

Coulson presses a button and the mirror clears up. 

On the other side of it is - a guy?

It’s a man running on a treadmill, about a thousand things connecting him to machines that are tracking his breathing, heart rate, stride, basically anything and everything SHIELD can think of. He’s taller than the average guy, and he’s definitely got more muscle packed on than Clara’s used to seeing, but she doesn’t get why he’s so special.

“Uh, did you find me a boyfriend?” she asks. “Because he’s not really my type.”

Coulson rolls his eyes. He presses the intercom. “Captain Rogers, might I have a moment of your time?”

Clara’s mouth falls open. The man on the treadmill stops running and begins the process of disconnecting himself from the machines.

“Captain Rogers?” she asks. “Like, Steve Rogers? You didn’t get me a boyfriend, you got  _ yourself _ one.”

The man’s - Steve Rogers’s - head jerks up, and Clara sees his face for the first time. Yep, looks like the guy from the SHIELD history books. Only...he’s blushing?

She looks over to see Coulson bright red too because, yep, the intercom’s still on.

“Whoops,” Clara says.

“I should send you back to the Amazon,” Coulson tells her.

Clara keeps her mouth shut until Captain Rogers finally gets himself free and comes to join them in the observation room. There’s a faint sheen of sweat on his face, and his shirt is soaked through, but he’s smiling.

“Agent Coulson,” he says before turning to Clara. “Ma’am.”

“Fuck. No,” Clara says. “It’s Agent Barton. Or Hawkeye.” Then. “Shit, I just swore in front of Captain America. Twice.”

Coulson takes a deep, fortifying breath.

“I was in the army,” Captain Rogers tells her. “I’ve heard people say ‘fuck’ before. Not women, really, but you’re not going to offend my ears.”

“Is that a challenge?” Clara wonders.

“No,” Coulson tells her firmly. “Agent Barton, this is Captain Rogers. We recently recovered him from his crash site, and our attempts to ease him into the 21st century were not well thought out.”

Captain Rogers snorts. There’s a story there that Clara can’t wait to get out of him. Or Coulson. But she’s betting Rogers is the easier mark.

“We’re taking a different approach now,” Coulson says. He looks between them and then braces himself before saying, “How would you like a roommate?”

Clara laughs, the kind where she has to wrap her arms around her stomach so she doesn’t pull something, because who in their right mind would put her and Captain America in an apartment together.

Only, Coulson isn’t laughing.

“What?” she gasps. “For real?”

“This is where I’m living now,” Captain Rogers says. “Immersion is the best way to get used to a new culture. I don’t want to be babied. But,” his face softens, “I also don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want you to feel any pressure to say yes.”

“I’ve got a spare bedroom,” Clara says, “but my feelings won’t be hurt if you change your mind once you see my apartment. Or, you know, after a day of living with me.” She looks over at Coulson. “You know this is going to be a disaster, right?”

“There are several plans in place if things don’t go well,” Coulson says. “But it could be good.”

“I’ll obviously pay my share of the rent,” Captain Rogers says. “I’ve got backpay, and a card that Agent Coulson says works like cash. And Agent Coulson says men and women can live together if they’re not married.”

“Yeah…” Clara says, “We’re not going to get stoned by the Church or anything, but everyone’s going to think we’re fucking.”

Captain Rogers blushes again.

It’s pretty much the best thing she’s ever seen.

“Obviously I’ll tell them we’re not. But I doubt anyone will believe it. Tony obviously won’t. Oh. How are you going to keep this a secret from Tony? I mean, the average person isn’t going to look at Captain Rogers and make the connection, but Tony will.”

“Tony?” Captain Rogers asks.

“Tony Stark,” Coulson answers. “Howard’s son. He was in the briefing I gave you. For now, we’re going to limit contact. Stark’s enough of a pain with the Iron Man situation and Dr. Banner.”

“Whatever,” Clara says, because it’s not her problem and that’s all she cares about. “When are you moving in?”

Captain Rogers looks between them. “Today?”

“I mean, doesn’t matter to me,” Clara says, “The apartment’s not clean, but it never is so if that’s what you were expecting then you should probably start looking for something else.”

“I grew up in the Depression,” Captain Rogers tells her, “and then I fought in the trenches in WWII. As long as there’s no lice and no mud, I’m good.”

“Low maintenance,” Clara says, approving. “We might just get along after all.”

Coulson looks like he’s regretting setting this up.


	7. Chapter 7

“How come you didn’t arrange this before I was cleared for heavy lifting?” Clara complains as she, Coulson, and Captain Rogers carry his bed frame up the narrow stairs to her apartment.

“You’re injured?” Captain Rogers asks, concerned.

“Not really,” she says. “Mostly recovered.”

“She was shot in the shoulder,” Coulson says. “She has a physical therapy regimen to be following.”

“Not fair, siccing him on me as a babysitter,” Clara says.

“You were shot?” Captain Rogers looks alarmed. “You can rest while we bring the rest of my stuff up. There’s not much of it.”

“I’m fine,” Clara says.

It takes them less than an hour to get Captain Rogers moved in, mostly because all he had was a bed and a duffel full of things SHIELD had given him - toiletries, clothes, shoes. It reminds her of her first days at SHIELD, and she ignores that pang in her chest and goes over to the fridge.

“So, moving etiquette is that if your friends help you move in then you buy them pizza and beer.” She looks over her shoulder at Coulson. “What kind of pizza do you want?”

“I’m not staying,” Coulson says. “I should let you two settle in.”

He looks around the apartment, and Clara wants to know if he likes it, if he’s judging her because it’s not all sleek stainless steel and granite counter tops like the apartments he picked out for her, but she keeps her mouth shut. She doesn’t need her handler to approve of her apartment. 

“Fine,” she says. She looks over at Captain Rogers. “What kind of pizza do you like? And how many can you eat?”

He shrugs.

“Ugh,” she says and dials her favorite pizza place. She gets two large cheese pizzas, one large pepperoni and mushroom, and one large meat lovers. Either it’ll be enough or it’ll be too much and they’ll have leftovers. 

Coulson leaves while she’s on the phone, and Captain Rogers starts investigating the apartment, and Clara thinks she might have been too impulsive opening up her apartment to him, because this is a bad,  _ bad _ idea.

“Um,” she says, leaning in his doorway, watching as he pokes at the rolled up towel she taped to the side of his window. “There’s a crack. The wind gets loud and kind of annoying if the towel isn’t there.”

She’s invited Captain Rogers - Captain freaking America - to live in her not exactly pristine apartment. 

To her surprise, he doesn’t demand to go back to SHIELD. He just smiles and says, “Is it bad I’m kind of relieved? SHIELD’s great but it felt like a barracks, and I just got out of a war, I don’t want to feel like I’m still living in one. And, I saw some pictures of what new apartments look like. They’re -” he struggles for the word he wants, “Perfect.”

“You don’t want perfect?” she asks.

“I’d be constantly worried about breaking something,” he says. “Things that are too neat, too clean - they’re not for me. Not that your place is messy,” he says quickly, like he’s afraid he’s offended her.

“No, I get you,” she says, surprised to find that she’s telling the truth. “There’s a reason I picked this place and not some fancy high rise.”

Captain Rogers smiles, and she’s struck by how  _ young _ he looks.

“And it’s definitely messy,” she says. 

The guest room is clean, because she never goes in there, but the trash probably should’ve been taken out two days ago, and she’s got two sweatshirts draped over the couch and one on top of the fridge, and she doesn’t even want to talk about what her room looks like.

“Messy means lived in,” he says. “And I was never good at making my bed.”

“Basic must’ve been hell for you,” she says.

“For a number of reasons,” he agrees. “Becoming Captain America was pretty swell, though. No one made  _ him _ do push-ups if his corners weren’t neat.”

“I don’t care about your bed,” she tells him, “and I won’t come in your room unless you’re dying or something. I expect you to stay out of mine.”

“Of course,” he says.

There’s a buzz that means the pizza’s here. “Come on,” she tells him. “Time for your next lesson in living in the modern world.”

He follows her down the stairs to where Clara’s favorite delivery kid is standing on the steps. He delivers pizza on his bike. Anyone who can balance pizza through New York traffic is someone worthy of respect.

She hands her card over and when she gets the receipt, she explains to Captain Rogers, “So I paid for the pizza, but then you have to tip. Anyone who brings you anything and basically all waitresses and waiters. Their wages are shit so they make their money in tips. 20% is standard.”

She leaves a tip bigger than that, because she has the money to do it, and New York is fucking expensive. 

Ricardo is openly staring at Steve, but Clara doesn’t answer any of his unasked questions. Instead, she transfers the pizzas from Ricardo’s hands to Captain Rogers’s.

“Make some use out of those muscles,” she tells him.

“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Rogers tells her, a smiling dancing in his eyes.

“You’re an asshole,” she says.

He just shrugs those massive shoulders of his and gestures for her to lead the way.

“Is this some chivalry thing?” she asks, eyes narrowed, even as she starts back up the steps.

“I need someone to open doors for me,” he tells her. “My hands are occupied.”

“You better be happy you’re holding my dinner or I’d kick you down the stairs,” she tells him.

He just laughs.

She’s letting them back into her apartment - she’ll have to get a set of keys made for him - when Rachel pokes her head out of her apartment.

“Clara you -” she cuts off when she sees Captain Rogers. “Well, he’s not your partner.”

“I’m Steve,” he tells her.

“We met in Afghanistan,” Clara says and, as she hoped, Rachel nods and doesn’t ask any invasive questions.

“Bring him to the roof tomorrow. Everyone’ll want to meet him. He staying with you?”

“Until he gets back on his feet,” Clara says.

She ushers Captain Rogers inside her apartment and breathes a little easier when the door’s shut. It’s not that she doesn’t like other people, it’s just sometimes it’s a little stressful trying to remember what she’s told them and what she’s allowed to tell them and - well, it’s easier to not like other people.

“You’re going by Steve?” she asks, taking the pizza from him and setting it up on the counter.

“I told SHIELD I was going by my name. Most people probably won’t make the connection, but if they do then they do. I’m not hiding.”

“Fair enough,” she says. “You might want to do some research into Afghanistan. That’s gonna be your cover story. You tell people you fought in trenches and punched Nazis, and they’re going to look at you weird.”

“Okay.” He tucks his hands into his pockets.

“But that’ll be later. Now, it’s pizza time. Come pick your poison, Captain.”

“Steve,” he tells her. “Just Steve.”

“Alright,  _ Steve _ ,” she says. It’s a little weird calling Captain America by his first name, but she also tranqed the Black Widow and survived so she thinks she can handle it. “You should call me Clara. My neighbors think I work security. Calling me Agent would lead to too many questions.”

“But you told them you were in Afghanistan?”

“Nah. But maybe now they’ll stop asking me if I got shot in a drug deal gone bad. I never should’ve let Wyatt think that’s what happened.”

Steve stops poking through boxes to look at her. “Drugs?”

“It’s -” it’s not really a long story, and it’s not like they have anything else to talk about. Clara sighs. “Get your pizza, and I’ll give you a rundown of our neighbors. You’re going to meet a bunch of them tomorrow night. I mean, if you want to. Burgers and dogs on the rooftop. Oh, I should go to the store to pick something up for that.”

Steve puts two slices of meat lovers and one slice of the other two on his plate before sitting down at the little table she almost never eats at. She loads up her plate and sits down next to him.

“Alright,” she says. “The woman in the hallways was Rachel. She has two kids…”

~*~

Clara takes Steve grocery shopping with her the next day, and doesn’t laugh at him when he stops in the middle of the produce section to just  _ stare _ .

“Refrigerated trucks,” she says. “You can get fresh fruit during basically any season. What’s your favorite?”

He looks over at the oranges but doesn’t move from where he’s standing.

She grabs a bag of them as well as a bunch of bananas and two pineapples. She can’t cook for shit, but her fridge is always stocked with fruits and vegetables, because they don’t require any cooking, and she never got a lot of fresh fruit as a kid.

“You know how to cook?” she asks once they’ve made it past produce and into the bread aisle.

He stops staring at the wall of bread to shake his head and say, “A little bit. Probably not with any of this stuff. Why are there so many  _ options _ ?”

“America,” she answers.

She grabs a sleeve of bagels, because toaster ovens are straightforward. She remembers how much pizza he ate the other night and grabs two other sleeves. She got cinnamon raisin, sesame seed, and everything bagels. She wonders if she should get plain ones just to be safe.

“Would you label yourself boring?” she asks.

“Not especially.”

She leaves the plain bagels where they are. She gets two loaves of bread while they’re here. PB&J is a good fallback food. 

“Do you cook?” he asks as they enter the canned soup and boxed pasta aisle.

“Nope. Mostly I just order takeout. I’m buying things now so you think I’m a somewhat well-adjusted adult. Also because Coulson’s probably going to come do kitchen checks or something to make sure I’m not starving you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Steve says.

Clara gets ten pounds of spaghetti and then goes to pick out a random selection of soup. Boiling water can’t be that hard. And heating up soup is something she’s done in a dozen safehouses. She’ll be able to do it in her own apartment.

“You’re what, 25?” she asks.

He ducks his head, mumbles, “23.”

“Fucking hell,” she mutters. She quickly looks around to make sure there aren’t any kids around.

They end up with a cart laden down with easy things to eat - bread, cereal, eggs, microwave ready meals - and she feels no shame when she cedes control of the cart to him when it gets heavier than she feels like pushing.

They’re wandering through an aisle when Steve pauses and reaches out towards a cookbook. “Betty Crocker’s still around?” he asks.

“I mean, the name is,” Clara says. “I’m not sure about the lady.” 

She’s not even sure Betty Crocker is a real person, but Steve’s turning the book over in reverential hands, and it’s the first thing he’s actually taken off a shelf.

“Put it in the cart,” Clara says. “Maybe we can try making shit. It can’t be that hard to follow directions.”

“I’m not very good at that,” Steve says.

“You were in the army!”

He shrugs, bashful again. 

“Well, we won’t burn the place down,” Clara says. “Hopefully. I’ve got a fire extinguisher.”

Steve doesn’t look reassured by this, but he puts the cookbook in the cart anyways. 

His face goes unnaturally white when the cashier rings them up.

“Inflation, huh?” he says, stunned.

“It’s a bitch,” Clara agrees, handing her card over.

He’s helping her put the groceries in her car when he says, “I’ll buy groceries next time.”

“Sure,” she says.

They have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, and Clara’s finishing her second one when she sees Steve tying the bread back up.

“You know,” she says, aiming for casual and probably missing by a long shot, “I eat a lot, but I doubt I eat enough for supersoldier metabolism.”

Steve pauses, twistie tie half done.

Clara noticed him matching her slice for slice for pizza, and now he’s matching her for sandwiches, and she’s not quite sure why, but she knows Coulson’ll kill her if she starves Captain America.

“I -” he begins.

“You saw the store,” she tells him. “They’re not going to run out of food. And we’re both employed by SHIELD so we’ve got money.”

His eyes skitter from her to the bread to the open jar of peanut butter, not lingering anywhere long.

“Things aren’t rationed anymore,” she says. “That’s all I’m saying.”

He slowly unwinds the bag of bread and takes out two slices. When she doesn’t say anything, he takes out another two.

She keeps him company while he eats the second half of his lunch.

When he’s done, they wash their plates and put them on the dish rack to dry.

“What’s this?” Steve asks, nudging the dishwasher.

She’d already blown his mind with the laundry services in the basement, but the dishwasher is a different story.

“Uh, dishwasher,” she says. “I’ve never had enough dishes to make it worth using. And,” she looks away, unable to keep eye contact. “I don’t know how.”

She’s never had one, not growing up, not at the circus, and at SHIELD their trays just disappeared to be washed by the kitchen staff or maybe even Starkbots for all she knows. 

“Hey,” Steve says, soft. She still doesn’t look at him. “What do you know about me?”

Clara tries to remember what she can from SHIELD’s materials and that biography Coulson gave her to read that one time. “First and only successful US serum recipient. USO tour, American war hero, you know, that stuff.”

“That’s Captain America,” he tells her. “What do you know about me?  _ Steve _ ?”

“Uh. You were little?”

Most of the reports talked about how plucky Steve Rogers, small of body but big of heart, got picked up by Erskine who gave him the body to match his spirit. It reeked of propaganda and never sat well with her.

“I was little,” he says, “And sick. All the time. Which meant my Ma worked to support the two of us. And when she passed, my friend Bucky and I moved in together, and even with both of us working we barely scraped by. I’m not going to judge you for anything. You certainly haven’t judged me.”

“Oh,” she says. She doesn’t know what to do with that. “No dad?”

“Died in the war,” Steve says. “The first one.”

“Ah.” She hopes he doesn’t ask her about her family.

“We could try the dishwasher sometime,” he says.

She eyes it, wary. “It needs some kind of soap or something.”

“I’m sure that store you took me to has it.”

“Next trip we’ll pick some up,” she says.

Steve rummages through some drawers until he can tape a piece of paper to the fridge. He writes  _ dishwasher soap _ on it.

Clara stares at the list for longer than necessary. She’s the kind of person with a grocery shopping list. She’s not sure how she feels about that. 

~*~

Dinner is easier than lunch, because they don’t have to put any effort into making it aside from the twenty four hot dogs Clara contributes to the cause.

“Damn,” Grills says when she hands them over.

“Wait until you see him eat,” she says, jerking a thumb towards Steve.

Steve ducks his head. “Sorry.”

Grills shrugs. “As long as you’ll eat ‘em, I’ll make ‘em.” He looks over at Clara, curious. “Friend?”

“Roommate,” Rachel says, sashaying over, trouble written all across her face. “Still holding that open room for your friend?”

“The second room was for someone else?” Steve asks. “I can move out. I didn’t realize. I -”

“Woah,” Clara says, holding up her hands, “First of all, Natasha doesn’t even know I have an apartment let alone know that I was going to offer her a place to stay. Second of all, she’s way more competent than I could ever hope to be and probably wouldn’t want to. Third of all, it’s your room. No one’s kicking you out.”

“Oh,” Steve says, relaxing. “Okay.”

“You two really aren’t?” Rachel asks waving a hand between them. “ _ Damn _ .” She turns her full attention on Steve. “We didn’t properly meet yesterday. I’m Rachel.”

And Steve, aka Captain America, aka the guy who took on the Red Skull and  _ won _ , looks terrified when confronted by an interested woman.

“Oh. Um.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m Steve. A friend. Clara’s friend. I mean, I could be your friend but you’re a stranger. I mean -”

Clara puts him out of his misery. “Why don’t I introduce you to Jeremy,” she says. “Unless pretty boys get you tongue-tied too?”

Steve blushes even harder.

Belatedly, she realizes that probably wasn’t a good thing to say. “Um, that’s probably something that would’ve gotten the shit beat out of you back home.”

“We had queer bars back home,” Steve tells her. “This isn’t the part that’s new to me.”

“Maybe don’t call them that,” she says. “It’s still mixed on whether it’s an insult or not. What’s the new part?”

“Oh,  _ hello there _ ,” Jeremy says when Clara brings Steve over to him. 

He’s in a pair of ash grey skinny jeans that make his legs look like toothpicks, and he’s wearing a pair of glasses she’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually need to see. He’s also looking at Steve like Christmas has come early.

Steve goes even redder. “I was a scrawny kid,” he reminds her. “Nobody ever looked at me twice.”

“Their loss,” Jeremy says. “You filled out real nice.”

“Please don’t leave me alone,” Steve says.

Clara pats his arm. “I’ll protect you from all the cute boys and girls who want to get in your pants.”

Jeremy pouts.

~*~

Clara wakes up in the middle of the night to a sound she doesn’t recognize. She can sleep through the clanking of the heater and the whir of the AC, and she’s gotten used to tuning out the TVs from other apartments, but there’s an unfamiliar sound in her apartment and that she can’t sleep through.

She gets up from her bed, takes the knife from her bedside table and goes to investigate.

She makes it to the living room before she realizes that what she hears is someone whimpering.

Not someone -  _ Steve _ .

She’s no stranger to nightmares, and she figures everything he’s been through guarantees a few. What she doesn’t know is what to do about it. She likes to have her nightmares in the privacy of her own room, and under no circumstances does she talk about them.

It’s an ongoing point of contention between her and Dr. Suresh.

She and Steve haven’t talked about nightmare protocol, something she’s regretting right about now.

He’s clearly in distress, and there’s some kind of thrashing that means he’s probably tangled up in his sheets and -

She’s going to have to go into his room.

She doesn’t bother being quiet when she opens the door, hoping that’ll be enough to wake him up.

It isn’t.

Instead, she gets to watch as he twists this way and that on his bed, sheet wrapped tight around his legs, pinning them together. There’s sweat soaking through his t-shirt, and he’s scrabbling at the air above him like he’s trying to escape something.

Like a tomb of ice.

Fucking fuck.

Natasha would dump a cup of water on Clara to snap her out of her nightmares, but Clara’s guessing that probably won’t work on a guy who’s dreaming of drowning and then freezing. 

So, avoiding his flailing limbs, Clara untangles Steve’s legs from the sheet and starts trying to pull it away from him. His hands immediately snap down to grab his end of the sheet and they get into a tug of war that will probably be funny to her sometime later but right now just ends up with her on her ass, and Steve sitting up in bed.

“Hello?” he asks.

“You awake?” she counters.

He looks around for the sound of her voice and turns on the light next to his bed.

She stays where she is on the floor and blinks against the sudden brightness.

“You were dreaming,” she says.

He touches his sweat damp hair then looks down at his wet t-shirt, white fabric now clinging and nearly see through. “Guess it wasn’t a good one.”

“You don’t remember?”

He looks away.

“Well, I’ve done my job,” she says. “You should try to go back to sleep.”

“Wait,” he says, when she’s halfway out the door.

She pauses and looks back.

Steve quickly looks away. “Sorry. Nevermind.” He pulls his knees up to his chest like he’s trying to make himself smaller.

Clara’s reminded of how Natasha had a way of warding off her nightmares, curling around Clara, holding her close like she was daring anyone or anything to try and get to her. Clara always felt safe, knowing nothing could get through Natasha.

She wonders what it must feel like for Steve to wake up from a dream into a world that might as well be another dream for how different it is. What it must feel like to wake up and remember you’re completely alone.

She shudders even though she’s not the one dreaming about ice.

“Change your sheets,” she tells him, because cold, damp sheets are never fun to sleep on, “and change your shirt.”

“Where are -” he can’t finish his question.

“I’m getting you a bottle of water,” she says. “I’ll be back.”

He nods and she waits until he starts to uncurl to go to the kitchen. She grabs two water bottles and an orange and grabs a napkin for good measure, trying to stall long enough for him to have finished changing.

He’s modest in a way she kind of understands. Being stared at means being noticed and being noticed makes you a target. Being stared at the way people stare at him - well, that makes her feel vulnerable, like she needs to run or cover up. She didn’t realize it was the same for guys, but it makes sense, she supposes. If he was as little as the history books say then any attention he got was probably bad attention, just like she was used to.

Makes sense that all those feelings didn’t go away just because he got a government-sanctioned growth spurt.

When she goes back into his room, there are fresh sheets on the bed, and he’s in a new white t-shirt. 

She hands him a water bottle and puts the other on his bedside table.

“Want me to stay?” she asks.

Steve startles, eyes wide, a refusal on his tongue when she adds, “My friend, Natasha, she stayed with me after some of my nightmares. Not being alone - it helped.”

Steve hesitates, fingers trembling around the cap he’s trying to twist off. “I -” he sounds lost, sounds impossibly young, and Clara’s surprised at how badly she wants to help him. “Sure.”

He looks defeated, shoulders slumping forward, even as he succeeds in getting the cap off his water bottle. 

He chugs half of it while Clara climbs onto the opposite side of his bed, giving him the space to decide how close he wants to be to her. But he doesn’t move after he puts the open water on the table. He just sits there, legs drawn up, eyes not quite focusing on anything in the room.

“Wanna lie down?” she asks. 

He nods and slowly stretches out, moving until his head is resting on his pillow. She moves closer, until her fingers brush the back of his arm.

“This okay?”

He nods again.

He’s tense, muscles locked too tight to be comfortable.

“Talk to me,” she says, because she can’t help him until she knows what’s going on in his head.

“You’ve given me a place to stay,” he says, talking to the ceiling, because that’s apparently safer than talking to her. “And you’ve been nice. It - it seems selfish to ask for more.”

Clara gets that. Boy, does she get that. But it’s something Coulson’s been trying to teach her isn’t the case since she first got to SHIELD. It’s something Natasha refuses to accept, telling her once  _ the point of asking is that I can say no _ which was comforting to Clara, but she’s not sure it’ll be as comforting to Steve.

He seems like the kind of guy who was told no too much.

Instead, Clara lets her fingers trail - light, careful - up then down his arm. “You’re not the only one with nightmares. I promise you’ll get to return the favor.”

Because owing people, paying them back - that’s the life Clara’s used to. She’s betting that Steve Rogers understands that system as well as she does. 

She can feel his muscles relax.

“Can you come closer?” he asks.

She scoots until he can wrap an arm around her shoulders, until he guides her head onto his broad chest. 

“Thanks,” he says, quiet enough that she’s not sure she’s meant to hear.


	8. Chapter 8

Learning from the rooftop cookout, Clara brings five pounds of ground beef with her and Steve when they go to the Parkers’ for dinner. He’s not technically invited, but she feels weird leaving him alone in the apartment while she goes and has dinner with someone else.

Of course, she didn’t fully think through the implications for bringing someone - especially a male someone - with her to the Parkers’.

“I’m May Parker,” May says when she answers the door. “Clara didn’t tell me she was bringing a boyfriend.”

“ _ Roommate _ ,” Clara says. “Steve is my roommate. And this is for you.”

She hands over the plastic grocery bag with the ground beef. May takes the bag and smiles a little. 

“Moved past flowers?” she asks.

Steve looks confused.

“Ben got shot,” Clara explains, “I brought him flowers the first time I visited.”

May brings them inside and puts the ground beef in the fridge before leading them into the living room. “Ben, this is Clara and her roommate, Steve. Don’t ask them if they’re dating, I already made that mistake. I’m going to text Peter to pick some things up at the store. Do you like hard shell or soft shell tacos?”

“Either’s fine,” Clara says. “And Steve’ll eat anything you put in front of him.”

“Wow,” Ben says, looking Steve up and down, “You certainly will, won’t you? Hey, if you’re not dating Clara, would you consider my nephew Peter? I could use a nephew-in-law with muscles like yours.”

“Um.” Steve’s ears turn pink. “I could help out without dating anyone.”

“He’s a little old for Peter,” Clara adds.

“Peter has a girlfriend!” May calls from the kitchen. 

Steve looks calmed by all the chaos. “Do you need something carried?”

“I need a magic pill is what I need,” Ben says.

“I hear the blue ones go for cheap,” Clara says.

“You’re selling him drugs?” Steve asks, horrified.

Right, he wouldn’t know what Viagra is. “It’s a boner pill,” she says. “You know for,” she motions to the front of his pants. “Guys who need some help gettin’ going?”

“They make a pill for that?” Steve asks.

“Not the magic pill I was talking about,” Ben says. “I would ask how tall, blonde, and handsome has never heard of Viagra, but I guess the tall, blonde, and handsome part makes it self-explanatory.”

“He’s saying you probably don’t have any problems getting it up,” Clara explains, just to watch Steve’s whole face turn red.

“Now you’re just being cruel to the poor boy,” Ben says. “Son - Steve, was it? Come sit next to me and tell me how you met Clara.”

“Oh. Um,” Steve looks over at Clara even as he sits in the arm chair next to Ben.

“You can tell him,” Clara says. “It’s not a secret. We served together.”

“Afghanistan,” Steve fills in.

“That how you got shot?” Ben asks Clara.

“Different mission,” she says. “But yeah.”

“Well,” Ben says, “Thank you for your service.”

Steve looks distinctly uncomfortable which is odd, because he’s the one who was actually in the military.

“It was the right thing to do,” Steve says. “I -” Clara can see him settling into Captain America, can see the smile she’s seen staring out at her from books crossing his face. It’s different than the smile she’s used to seeing now, the soft one when he’s sleepily stumbling out of his room in the morning or the wide open one once he’s told a joke and is waiting for her to laugh along. 

Steve shakes himself. “It’s in the past,” he says. “I’m out now.”

“Oh?” Clara asks. This is news to her.

Steve hunches his shoulders, like he’s expecting her to get mad. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it.”

“No judgment from me,” she says. She’s pretty sure she’s supposed to talk him into joining up with SHIELD, but if that’s really what they wanted from her, they shouldn’t have made her his roommate. He’s more than the shield, more than a costume and a patriotic slogan, more than a toy soldier you can wind up then let go.

“You serious about performing manual labor for me?” Ben asks. “I’ll make sure we feed you, but I’m couch-ridden while I recover and Peter; well, you’ll understand when you see him.”

“I told you we could just hire someone to plow the driveway!” May calls from the kitchen.

“I can shovel your driveway for you,” Steve says. “It’s no problem at all.”

“You’re a good lad,” Ben says. 

The three of them are chatting when Peter comes home, skateboard clacking on the steps, door swinging open as he stumbles in, arms laden down with bags. “Are we feeding an army?”

“You are a teenage boy,” May says, “Which makes you half an army. I think Clara and her friend constitute another half.”

“Clara brought a friend?”

Peter comes into the living room and he looks from Steve to Clara, mouth hanging open. “Wow. Um, congratulations?”

Clara wants to slap her forehead.

She doesn’t, because she’s ostensibly an adult, and because she gets distracted by Steve, who’s eyeing Peter with...concern? She looks over at Peter, wondering what Steve is seeing. 

“Son,” Steve says, standing up, and in the Parkers’ living room he looks larger than life. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Peter looks mildly alarmed but he follows Steve back out to the porch, and Clara’s eyes narrow when she sees the way he’s favoring his right leg and what looks like road rash on the underside of his arm. She’ll have to find out what Steve’s talking to Peter about, because if it’s not about his new injuries then Clara’s going to have a chat with Peter.

“Son?” Ben asks, pulling Clara out of her thoughts. “He’s a little young to be talking like that.”

“He’s old-fashioned,” Clara says.

“Mm-hmm,” Ben says. “And polite enough not to know what Viagra is?”

Clara shrugs. “Nice boys do exist in the world.”

“My nephew is a nice boy,” Ben says, “He still knows what Viagra is.”

“A nice, sheltered boy,” Clara says.

Ben looks at her like she’s full of shit. 

~*~

After they’ve stuffed themselves full of as many tacos as they can stomach, Clara and Steve help with the clean-up. They’re side by side washing dishes, and it feels a little like being back at their apartment except there’s no dish rack.

Steve nudges her. “They’ve got a dishwasher.”

“Yeah,” she says. She thinks about asking May how to use it but then she remembers the first time she had dinner here, and she’d talked about her eating habits and ended up with pity leftovers. Steve’s a captain in the Army, and she’s a SHIELD agent. They can figure out a dishwasher on their own.

She puts the plates in the dishwasher. “How was your talk with Peter?”

Steve stiffens, shoulders rigid with anger. “Someone’s hurting him.”

“Yeah,” Clara sighs. “I’ve been teaching him a few things. Clearly not enough. He tell you who it was?”

Steve shakes his head. “I tried to tell him I know what it’s like having guys take swings at you for running your mouth but no one sees this,” he motions to himself, “and believes how little I used to be. It’s weird. I’ve only had this body for a couple years. I’m still not used to it. Every morning I wake up and look in the mirror, and I’m surprised all over again.”

He shakes himself. “This isn’t about me, though. You said you’re working with him?”

“He’s been picking up the few tricks I’ve taught him,” she says. She looks over her shoulder to see the three Parkers in the living room, crowded around Ben’s couch. “But I guess they’re not doing him much good.”

“As someone who got the shit kicked out of him in a lot of back alleys, you can’t help someone unless they want it. And he might not want it.”

“He’s too smart to be that stupid.”

Steve looks over at her as he hands her the last glass. “You’ve never got stupid about a fight?”

“Of course  _ I  _ have. I’m just saying, he shouldn’t.”

Steve looks amused as he dries off his hands. “Maybe I can come to some of these sessions. Give you someone to demo with at the very least.”

“That’d be good,” she says. “He’s tentative, and I don’t want to hurt him. Now, come on. Let’s go ask Peter about the latest Spiderman stories.”

“Spiderman?” Steve asks.

“You’re in for a treat,” she promises.

~*~

“Superheroes?” Steve asks on their way home from the Parkers’.

“Hope it doesn’t hurt your feelings, but I think he drew his inspiration from Iron Man, not you.”

Steve gives her a flat look. “I wasn’t a hero, let alone super. I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.”

“Uh huh,  _ Brooklyn boy _ ,” Clara says. “You tell your massive army of fanboys that.”

“Fanboys?”

“Like Coulson. Except instead of suits they wear t-shirts with your shield or your face on them. And they spend their days arguing about your life on the internet.”

“Sometimes the future is weird,” he tells her.

She can’t argue with him there.

~*~

There’s a series of clanks and a clunk and then what sounds like a river breaking through a dam, and Clara peeks over the top of the couch to make sure the dishwasher hasn’t in fact flooded their kitchen.

Nope, no flooding.

Just a dishwasher vibrating with alarming intensity and the cheerful, blinking green numbers that tell them how much longer their dishwasher is going to make a racket for.

“Is it supposed to be this loud?” Clara asks.

Steve, hiding behind the couch with her, shrugs.

It took the two of them a week to use enough dishes to justify running the dishwasher, and they’d put one of those pod things in from the grocery store before hitting the start button. 

They could’ve gotten traditional dishwasher soap, but Clara figured single use pods were better. Less of a chance of using too much and flooding the kitchen with suds. (She might have looked up dishwasher horror stories on the internet).

None of the horror stories mentioned that their dishwasher would try to make an escape.

“That rumbling can’t be good,” Clara says.

“We could call May and ask?” Steve suggests.

“Maybe Coulson,” she says, but she dismisses the thought right away. She doesn’t want either May or Coulson to know how ill-equipped they are to live on their own.

There’s a new sound - a door opening in the hallway - and Clara leaps to her feet to go and see who it is.

It’s Rachel.

“Hey,” Clara says, leaning against her doorway, trying to look natural.

Rachel’s eyes narrow, suspicious.

“Um, can you come listen to our dishwasher?” Clara asks.

Rachel won’t judge, because Rachel has had to call their supervisor to fish crayons out of the toilet when Isabella flushed them down and got it clogged. 

“I can’t do anything to fix it if it’s broken,” Rachel warns, but comes over anyways.

Steve’s standing up now, apparently deciding that cowering behind a couch with Clara is okay but not when Rachel is in the room. 

Rachel takes one look at the dishwasher and laughs. “That’s what it does. Which is why no one does their dishes at night. You’ll wake up the whole floor.”

“Okay,” Clara says, relieved that they didn’t do something wrong. “Thanks.”

Rachel looks between the two of them and shakes her head. “I worry about you two.”

“We haven’t set off the smoke alarm yet,” Clara says, “and we do laundry every week.”

Steve nods along like this is proof that they’re fine living on their own.

Rachel just shakes her head again.

~*~

Clara brings Steve with her to her next trip to the VA, because she brings Steve with her everywhere she goes, and because she thinks it might be good for him. Or, at the very least, that he might get something more out of it than she does.

Sam looks genuinely happy to see her, and she feels a little bad for basically ignoring the place for a week.

“I brought a friend,” she says, jerking her thumb towards Steve. “That means I get a free donut or something, right?”

“All the donuts are free,” Sam says. He holds a hand out to Steve. “Sam Wilson. I’m in charge of this place. In theory, anyways.”

“Steve.”

“Nice grip you’ve got there, Steve,” Sam says. “I don’t know what Clara’s told you about what we do here, but you’re welcome to come as often as you like and participate as much or as little as you want.”

Now that they’re done shaking hands, Steve shoves his hands into his pockets. “She says people talk. You can just sit and listen if you want.”

“Absolutely,” Sam says. “Kayla’s getting ready to run a session if you want to sit in on one.”

Steve looks unsure, but Clara gives him a nudge. “Go. Sit. Listen a bit. And if you don’t like it then there’s a gym. You can go and punch things.”

“You’re not coming?” Steve asks.

Clara looks over at Sam. “Gotta catch up on a week’s worth of therapy.”

“Still not a therapist,” Sam says. 

“I won’t leave without you,” Clara promises. “And I’m serious, if it’s not your thing then there’s a great big gym. I kick Sam’s ass in there at least twice a week.”

“She cheats,” Sam says.

“Maybe you two can go running sometime,” Clara says, because Sam gets hilariously put out whenever he loses, and there’s no way he’s faster than Steve Rogers. “Steve’s into all this weight lifting which makes him look huge, but isn’t so good for the running.”

“Yeah?” Sam asks.

Steve looks momentarily confused, because he  _ is  _ a good runner, but then he sees Clara’s grin, and his eyes light up. “I’ve been told that I lift too much, and if I don’t start getting in a good cardio routine then I’m going to lose a lot of my flexibility.”

“We can run sometime,” Sam says. “Central Park’s not too far, and they do a good job keeping the trails cleared even in the winter. Or we can just do treadmills.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

Clara gives him a thumbs up behind Sam’s back.

~*~

Their next visit, they reverse roles, Clara going to sit in at a session and Steve hanging out with Sam.

When Clara’s session is over, she goes to the gym, and laughs when she sees Sam flat on his back on one of the mats, breathing heavy. Steve’s standing next to him, mildly concerned but with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“You,” Sam says, weakly pointing a finger at Clara, “are a liar.”

“I am?” Clara asks. “That’s a hurtful thing to say.” She looks over at Steve. “You schooled him?”

“Oh yeah,” Steve says, looking smug.

“I hate you both,” Sam groans.

Steve and Clara high five.

~*~

Clara hasn’t had a nightmare since Steve moved in, at least, not one on this level. She still has the occasional dream about piranha monkeys, and there have been times where gunshot wounds that just put her out of commision for a few months in real life kill her in her dreams, but tonight she dreams about Barney.

(her subconscious is kind enough that she never even dreams of Budapest)

But Barney isn’t off limits, and she can feel the weight of his body on her chest, pressing down, heavier in her dream than real life. She’s being crushed, breath slowly pressed out of her, and no matter how much she cuts him up, no matter how much blood or how many organs spill out, he doesn’t get lighter.

She can’t push him off, and cutting him to pieces isn’t making him lighter, and she wakes up gasping for breath, the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

She gags even though it’s her blood, not her brother’s, and she’s afraid she’s going to throw up.

She’s leaning over her bed, breathing heavy, talking herself out of vomiting when a shadow catches her eye.

She rolls over to the other side of her bed and grabs the knife from her bedside table. She throws it without having to think, without having to aim, and there’s a grunt at it embeds in the shadow’s shoulder.

Clara’s brain kicks on about the same time she reaches for her second knife and -

“Steve?” she demands, high-pitched, breathy, edging close to a shriek.

She turns her light on and there’s Steve Rogers, standing in her doorway, her knife sticking out of his shoulder.

“Oh my -” she starts to get up, but then she’s not sure he wants her near him right now and -

“Hey,” Steve says, gentle, like  _ he’s _ trying to comfort  _ her _ . “It’s okay.”

There’s blood seeping through his shirt, staining the white cotton a dark red, and Clara shakes her head, because this is  _ not  _ okay.

Steve makes a face as he pulls the knife out of his shoulder and then he wipes it clean on his shirt and puts it on the edge of her bed. 

“Sorry for not knocking,” he says.

Clara stares at the knife and then stares at him, brain scrambling to keep up and failing.

“You - I  _ threw a knife at you _ ,” she hisses.

He pulls his t-shirt over his head and dabs at the wound. “Almost healed,” he tells her.

Her heart’s going a mile a minute, because she just knifed Captain fucking America, and he’s standing, shirtless in her bedroom, telling her it’s okay. 

Coulson’s going to have her badge for this.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I know you said never to come in, but you were having a nightmare. It didn’t sound good.”

Clara presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. “I - yeah, I was.”

“I can leave?” Steve asks.

“I mean, if I were you I’d be running,” she says.

“Running away isn’t really my thing,” he says with a little smile. “But, this is about you. What do you need?”

A do over of the last five minutes would be nice.

“Or,” Steve corrects, “What do you want?”

Now that she knows there’s no threat in the room, her body’s trembling, recovering from the nightmare, recovering from the fact that she threw a knife at her friend and hit him, and she wants a lot, but she doesn’t deserve any of it. She -

“Hey,” Steve says again, even softer. “You helped me out, remember? My turn.”

His turn. If he’s paying back a favor then it’s okay. If she’s not asking for something she hasn’t already given then it’s okay.

He’s not Natasha, but Natasha isn’t here, and Clara doesn’t want to be alone right now.

“You didn’t try and kill me when I woke you up,” she says.

“Then I guess I woke you up wrong.”

Yeah, she thinks. 

“Dump a cup of water on me next time,” she says. Because there will be a next time. There are things in her head that aren’t ever going to go away, things that are going to haunt her until the day she dies.

“Okay,” he says. “I should go wash the blood off. You want me to come back?”

She does. Maybe if the sun was beginning to come through her window or if it had been a different dream she’d be able to say no. But it’s still dark outside, hours until morning, and there’s still a phantom weight pressing down on her chest.

“Please,” she says and she can’t look at him when she says it.

She knows when he leaves the room, just like she knows when he’s come back, because she’s a trained SHIELD agent. It’s the same reason she woke up knowing someone was in her room. But awake, she knows that the shadow flitting out then coming back in is Steve, is a friend, and she doesn’t tense up when he returns.

Well, not because she’s in danger, at least.

He closes the door behind him and then stands at the foot of her bed, not quite at attention, but definitely waiting to be told what to do.

He’s in a new shirt, no blood on this one, and she shakes her head. “Take off your shirt?”

He does, one smooth motion, not a hint of a blush on his face. She’s seen him blush at a sideways look from a stranger on the street, but here, in her bedroom, his shirt off and joining her on her bed at the crook of her finger, there’s no embarrassment to be seen.

She touches the healing mark on his skin, comforts herself that if she was going to stab a friend, at least it was one with an advanced healing factor.

“I’m fine,” he promises, but he kneels there on her bed and lets her touch him until she’s made sure of that for herself.

“Okay,” she says, pulling her hand back. “Okay. Um, you can put your shirt back on.”

He does, and it’s inside out, but she doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t fix it. She moves her pillows so her favorite one is in the middle of the bed. She lies back down.

“Can you - behind me?” she asks.

He lies down behind her. She can feel his breath on her neck, and he’s so much bigger than her that his feet reach long past hers, but it’s a good feeling, the way he completely dwarfs her, the way his body drapes over her as if to say ‘you have to get through me first’.

She wraps his free arm securely around her waist. 

“You good?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he answers, voice thick, already half-asleep.

She pulls her comforter over the two of them and then clicks off her light. Steve pulls her back against his chest, and she closes her eyes and focuses on the feeling of being safe until she drifts back to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Clara comes out of her bedroom after a frustrating phone call with Coulson to see Steve frowning at the TV.

“The Pyramids were built by aliens?” he asks.

“The History Channel is a lie,” she tells him. “I’ve got a meeting to go to. You might want to change channels before they start on a WWII documentary.”

“Meeting at SHIELD?” Steve asks.

“Nah, Tony Stark.”

Steve abandons any interest he had in the TV. “Can I come with you?” 

There’s nothing wrong with him coming to the meeting - mostly it’s going to be Clara yelling at Tony, because he wants to throw a fundraiser with Bruce as the main attraction - but the whole meeting Tony thing might get dicey.

“He’ll know who you are,” Clara says.

So far, Steve’s gotten a few looks, but no one’s made the connection between her roommate Steve and the Steve Rogers who supposedly died in the Arctic seventy some odd years ago. Even Sam hasn’t put it together; he just thinks Steve’s unfairly fit. 

But Tony Stark, who took over looking for Steve’s plane when his father died, is going to take one look at Steve and know exactly who he is.

“Is that a problem?” Steve asks.

Nothing about his posture has changed, but there’s something a little challenging in his tone, like he’s seeing her as Agent Barton right now and not Clara. This is probably why you don’t room with people you work with, she thinks. Too many personas to navigate.

“Only if you think it is,” she replies. SHIELD hasn’t given her any orders to keep Steve hidden away or a secret. She’s sure Fury doesn’t  _ want _ the entire world knowing that he’s around until Fury’s ready for it, but she wasn’t told specifically not to let Steve come out of hiding. “Tony’s not good at keeping his mouth shut.”

“I’m not going to hide away forever,” Steve says. He turns off the TV. “You have five minutes for me to get changed?”

“Sure,” she says.

She’s pretty sure there’s no way this ends well.

Steve changes out of his sweatpants and into a pair of khakis and a button-up that’s too tight on his arms. He also has to wear it unbuttoned, because the shirt pulls weird across his chest. Clara almost makes a comment about how that happens to Natasha when she’s too busty for a shirt and then decides to keep her mouth shut.

“I want to thank him for his contributions to SHIELD,” Steve says as Clara drives them to the Tower. 

“He’ll hate that,” she warns.

“Well, mostly I meant for the tablet I got issued,” Steve says. “I downloaded some drawing programs. Pretty cool what you can do with technology these days.”

“He might like that better.”

Steve frowns at her. “You’re upset.”

“Not with you,” she says. If Steve wants to meet Tony Stark and suddenly have the entire international press and the US military breathing down his back then that’s his choice. “Tony’s being stupid.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” She sighs and flexes her hands on the steering wheel. She doesn’t know how she ended up playing go-between for Tony and SHIELD. She wants to be back out in the field. She wants to be back up in a perch, keeping her team safe.

She’s got a badge that means she doesn’t need Janice the receptionist to clear her to get in the elevator, and she doesn’t need an intern to escort her to Tony’s floor. Instead, she gets to use the private elevator, and Jarvis greets her as soon as she and Steve get in.

Steve startles at the voice and looks around, but it’s just the two of them.

“Jarvis, meet my friend Steve,” Clara says. “Steve, meet Jarvis, Tony’s AI.”

“Woah,” Steve says. “Nice to meet you, Jarvis.”

“And you, Steve.”

“Jarvis, is Bruce with Tony?” Clara asks.

“Yes. They’re both waiting for you. Would you or your friend like a drink for the meeting?”

“No,” Clara says, “I don’t intend to stay long.”

“Of course,” Jarvis says. It sounds like he’s humoring her.

Clara stalks out of the elevator as soon as it opens on the penthouse floor, and Steve follows her into the living room. Bruce is sitting on the couch, fiddling with his phone, and Tony’s leaning against the bar, but for once there isn’t a glass in his hand.

Both men look up at her entrance, and both men stare hilariously at Steve.

“Steve, meet Tony Stark,” Clara says, “and Dr. Bruce Banner. Smart people, this is Steve.”

“Holy shit,” Tony says. “Anyone ever tell you you look like Captain America?”

“Once or twice,” Steve says, dry. 

Tony turns his attention to Clara. “SHIELD wouldn’t have found Captain America in the ice and then forgotten to mention it to me even though it’s SI that’s led the search for him since he first fell, would they?”

“I’m not here to talk about Captain America,” Clara says. “I’m here to talk about Dr. Banner.”

“No,” Tony says, even as Clara sits down across from Bruce. “You can’t bring  _ him _ here and then refuse to answer any of my questions.”

“You could try asking me,” Steve says, a touch of irritation in his voice. “And while we’re talking about similarities, anyone ever tell you you look like Howard Stark?”

Tony gapes.

Bruce doesn’t even try to hide his laugh.

“They did find you,” Tony says. “What the hell? I am going to send Fury a very strong worded letter. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you? How long my dad looked for you?”

Steve shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable. 

“Did you bring him here to taunt me?” Tony demands, turning back to Clara. “Fury’s way of saying ha-ha good try but we got him first? Or is this because of the Avengers Initiative?”

“It’s funny,” Clara says, venom slipping into her voice, because she doesn’t have the control Coulson does and Tony has a way of getting under her skin, “but not everything’s about you and your feud with SHIELD. Steve just wanted to meet the guy who made his tablet.” She looks back at Steve. “I did warn you he was an asshole, didn’t I?”

Steve’s eyes are a touch too wide, the only sign he’s overwhelmed at all at the situation. But, noticing the attention on him, he squares his shoulders, holds his head high. “I’m not unfamiliar with the Stark personality.”

“I’m not my father,” Tony says, glaring.

Steve matches his look. “And I’m not Fury’s dancing monkey.”

“Well,” Bruce murmurs, voice pitched only for Clara to hear. “This is fun.”

“Just letting Steve soften him up,” Clara says, because she’s got some yelling of her own to do, but that can wait until Steve and Tony get all their aggression out. 

“I want to do it,” Bruce says, even as Tony throws a pointed barb at Steve.

“Want to do what?” Clara asks.

“The fundraiser.”

Clara raises her eyebrows. When Coulson told her Tony was planning to parade Bruce in front of not just the socialites of the city but the highest ranking brass he could find, she figured it was a ‘I have him and you don’t’ or ‘try and take him’ sort of thing. If Bruce is on board then there might be more to it.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding,” Bruce says. “That’s why I came back, isn’t it?”

Clara doesn’t say anything.

“Ross can’t argue that I’m the Hulk and a danger unless he admits to unlawful experimentation, gross negligence, and a number of other things I’m sure he wants left private. He’s not after Bruce Banner.”

“You don’t think he’ll,” Clara frowns, “poke you until you go green?”

“I’m sure that’ll be his strategy,” Bruce says, “but I’ve been working on my control, and outside the fundraiser, there’s no reason for him to be following me. I’m going to stay in the mansion, but I’m not going to hide in it.”

It’s a distinction Clara doesn’t get, but it’s clearly important to Bruce and in the end, that’s all that matters.

“It’s your choice?” she confirms. “This is what you want?”

“It is,” he says. “I want to publish again. I want to work with other scientists. I want to  _ exist _ .”

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll talk to SHIELD. They’ll probably want to send some back-up to the fundraiser, but it’s your life. I don’t see how they can keep you from going.”

Bruce looks over at where Steve and Tony are inches from each other, Steve looming and Tony defiant, neither of them giving an inch. “They give him his life?”

“He’s here, isn’t he?” Clara asks.

She stands up to break up this little fight before it goes too far.

From the couch, she can see everything perfectly. Tony, small in the face of a giant, smaller even because this is the giant that ruled his home, the giant that eclipsed Tony in its shadow when Tony was just a boy and Steve just a memory. Tony, head up, snarl on his lips because he’s never backed down from a challenge, because he’s been fighting a ghost his whole life and finally the ghost has form, something Tony can push against.

And then there’s Steve, bigger than he was before but still recognizing a bully when he sees one, still not giving an inch, because he’s fought for every bit of life he’s got, and he’s not going to give it up. It’ll have to be taken from him. 

She can see the fight ending in blood, ending in Tony with his suit and Steve with his shield and the living room a mess. She can see a dozen bloody scenarios, and she puts an end to all of them by stepping between the two men.

“Can’t you do the civilized thing and just compare your dicks?” she asks.

Bruce, still on the couch, laughs.

It helps ease the tension in the room but not by much.

“Sure,” Tony says, smile edged with something out of his control, “Let’s see if the serum made all of you big.”

“I’m more than the serum,” Steve says, truth gritted through his teeth, raw to Clara’s ears. 

“So you’re saying it’s small?” Tony sneers. “Guess all that muscle had to be overcompensation for something.”

This close, her body pressed between the two of them, she can’t see all the possibilities, all the different ways this might go. She wishes Natasha was here, because Natasha’s good at close combat, knows how to diffuse a situation with a cool look or a single arched eyebrow. 

“Like you’re one to talk,” Steve says. “I’ve seen your armor on the news. If we’re talking overcompensation -”

“At least I made it myself,” Tony says. “Everything special about you came from someone else.”

Clara’s got a hand on Steve’s chest - not on Tony’s, never on Tony’s - so she feels the swell of anger, the way his entire body rises up, muscles clenching, ready for use, before he...stands down?

All the anger, all the fight drains out of him, and he shrinks away from her hand. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse like he’s been yelling but they never raised their voices. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

Steve takes a few steps back, drags his hand down his face, and he looks every bit of his 90-something years. 

“Good job, genius,” Clara hisses at Tony.

She doesn’t care that he looks floored, that there might even be a bit of guilt creeping its way into his conscience, because Tony isn’t hers to look after anymore. She gives Bruce a pointed look, a ‘he’s your problem,’ and then takes Steve by the arm and brings him home.

Later that night, Clara sits in Steve’s bed, combing her hand through his hair, his head pillowed on her leg.

“He’s wrong,” Clara tells him. 

“Yeah,” Steve says but he doesn’t sound convinced.

~*~

Steve bounces back the next morning, because he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t get held down by anything for long, not while there’s still fight left in him, and he and Clara go to the VA and for the first time, Steve wraps his big fingers around her wrist and says, “Stay?”

So they sit in a session together for the first time and then Steve goes for another first and volunteers to talk.

Sam, the one running today’s session, hides his surprise better than Clara does when Steve stands up and everyone in the circle turns their attention to him.

Steve seems a little surprised himself, and she can see him grow uncomfortable under all the stares, can see the panic in his eyes the moment he realizes he’s just brought all this attention on himself, but then he takes a deep breath, clears his throat, and starts talking.

“My name’s Steve,” he says, “I’m 23, and I didn’t always look like this.”  He looks down at his hands, disbelief in his eyes, like he’s still not sure they’re his. “Nobody’s around who remembers that anymore. My Ma did, because she birthed me, kept me alive when it seemed like everything in the world wanted me dead. My best friend did too, and he kept an eye out for when I got myself into trouble I couldn’t handle on my own.

“I joined the Army, because my best friend did, because that’s how my Pa died, because I was tired of fighting asthma and pneumonia and wanted to fight something I could actually hit. I joined the Army, because I thought it would make me into something different and it did. It made me into this.”

Steve gestures to his body. “And now I can walk up a flight of stairs without losing my breath, and I can run through a forest for days and come out the other side of it with my gun up ready to shoot someone. I can ride a fucking rollercoaster without getting sick.” He chokes up here, a memory Clara isn’t familiar with.

“The Army made me into this,” he says, recovering, “Or, maybe they just made my outside match my inside. I don’t know. All I know is that they made me into a weapon, and that makes them think they own me. Somedays, it’s real hard to remember I’m a person, that I was someone before I was this and that I’m still someone even though I’m this. Somedays, I don’t want to remember. I want them to use me and then put be back in my sheath or my holster until they need me again.”

Steve’s staring at his hands, a stricken expression on his face like he’s imagining all the people he’s killed with them. “I used to be an artist. I tried once or twice when I was overseas. Kept snapping the pencils. I don’t - I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Except - that’s a lie. I’m telling you, because I think I want to quit the Army, and it feels like the most selfish thought I’ve ever had in my life.”

He’s reached the end of his words, but he doesn’t know what to do now, just stands there, looking around the room for help, for a rope, for  _ something _ , and it’s Sam that comes to his rescue.

“Thank you for sharing, Steve,” Sam says. “Does anyone else have something they want to share?”

The way Sam accepts what he’s said but doesn’t make it a big deal is enough, and Steve sits back down next to Clara.

She reaches a hand out, palm up, and he grips it like he’s afraid he’ll lose her if he doesn’t. Or maybe he’s afraid he’s the one who’s going to get lost, who’s going to float away if he doesn’t cling to her. 

She lets him cling and when the session is over, when Sam’s making his way over to them she shakes her head, mouths  _ later _ , and brings Steve home.

“Tony was wrong,” Steve says as he mechanically works his way through the pile of sandwiches Clara made him. “I was something before the serum.”

Clara peels an orange for him while he eats.

“I was mouthy, got kicked around for it. Bucky used to tell me it wasn’t worth being right if I ended up dead, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the world got me so I was going to stick to what I believed. The serum just made it so I could back up whatever I had to say.”

“You should come with me to Tony’s fundraiser,” she says. “I’ll reintroduce you. You should ask him about the Avengers Initiative.”

Steve frowns a little.

“You’ll like it,” she tells him. She puts the peeled orange on his plate and gets up.

She gives his shoulder a squeeze before she goes to her room to text Pepper and tell her she’ll need a tuxedo in addition to a dress for the event.

It feels like the beginning of an end.

~*~

Clara hates the dress.

It’s one of the very few times she’s been in a dress, and her fuzzy memories of a hand-me-down velvet thing that looked pretty on the outside but was itchy on the inside make her frown when she unzips the bag to reveal the dress Pepper picked.

There’s no velvet, and nothing itchy underneath to make the dress poof, and it’s not for a Christmas service, but Clara knows she has to wear it and smile just like she had to wear the Christmas dress, because her mom had scrimped and saved so Clara could have it.

The dress is strapless but tight enough Clara doesn’t worry it’s going to fall down, and there’s a slit up the middle that at first makes her frown until she realizes it means she can wear a thigh holster and have easy access to her weapon.

It’ll look weird reaching up her dress for a gun if she needs it, but, then again, if she needs it then no one’s going to be too worried where she’s pulling it from.

Tony, bored one day, designed a new kind of ammunition for her. The rounds are smaller, thinner, designed to release the contents of the bullet into a person’s system rather than kill them. They can kill, of course, if you’ve got the accuracy for a dead on shot (which she does) but they’re meant to incapacitate, to leak a paralytic into the target’s system.

Clara keeps an extra clip in her purse along with a knife.

She doesn’t bother with make-up or styling her hair, because she’s not going to this thing to make an impression. She’s going to make sure General Ross doesn’t provoke the Hulk and to make sure Tony and Steve’s second meeting doesn’t come to blows.

When she comes out of her room, Steve is fussing with his cuffs, but he looks up and just stares, cuffs forgotten when he sees her.

She’s staring back.

She knows, objectively, that Steve is an attractive man. Seeing him in a tailored suit designed to highlight every inch of that attractiveness is a lot to take in. His waist, unusually narrow, at least compared to the breadth of his shoulders doesn’t look quite so narrow with the black cumberbund, and there’s a shine to the suit that catches the light every time he shifts, that demands attention.

He’s going to get devoured by high society women tonight.

Clara almost feels bad.

Instead, she clears her throat. “We should go,” she says. “Tony’s the only one allowed to be late for his parties.”

Steve’s eyes linger on her shoulders, like he’s never seen bare shoulders before. She has the sudden, uncomfortable thought that maybe he hasn’t.

“Too bad Pepper didn’t send a shawl,” she says.

“You can have my jacket,” he says, seeming to come back to himself. 

He’s halfway out of it when she shakes her head. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

She doesn’t let Steve give her his jacket, but she does give him her arm as they enter the massive ballroom Tony’s rented for the occasion, allows Steve to escort her into a place neither of them have any business being.

Just yesterday, they looked up whether cheese could be eaten if you cut the moldy bits out and after some research, Steve just shrugged and said, “Time to see how good the serum really is,” and made himself three grilled cheese sandwiches.

And now they’re in clothes hand-picked by the CEO of Stark Industries and being offered flutes of champagne by passing waitstaff. 

“There’s no way this ends well,” Clara murmurs and Steve laughs and pulls her closer to him.

“This can’t be worse than the USO tour. My turn to protect you.”

“My hero,” she says, fluttering her eyelashes, and he laughs again and leads her to the buffet table.

It’s full of finger foods, the kinds of things she’d expect to be carried around on trays, but she supposes only alcohol is supposed to be that easily accessible. She fills a plate with food and shakes her head when Steve looks over at the bar.

“I don’t drink,” she says.

“It’s got no effect on me,” he says. He stacks a piece of cheese and mini-sausage on a cracker and pops it into his mouth. “This ain’t so bad though.”

They hide by the buffet table for a while, eating their fill, and after Tony makes his grand entrance and pithy speech about Bruce, Clara drags Steve out onto the dance floor.

“Um,” he says when she puts his hands on her waist.

“It’s called dancing,” she says. It’s a reach to get her hands up around her neck so she adjusts them again, puts one of her hands on his shoulder, the other holds one of his. It brings them even closer but she ignores that. “I’m going to discreetly point some people out to you for you to keep an eye on.”

“Oh,” Steve says, relieved, entire body relaxing into her. 

“What, you never dance with a girl before?” Clara teases.

Just like that, he tenses up all over again. “Girls weren’t exactly lining up around the block for me.”

“They were stupid,” she tells him. “Now, over there in the full uniform, that’s General Ross.”

Clara takes two songs to point out the major players in the room and when it’s over, she brings Steve over to where Tony is holding court with what looks like a bunch of investors. Bruce is hovering at his side, champagne flute in hand, but it doesn’t look like he’s had a drink from it.

The crowd’s attention is so focused on Tony, that it takes a bit of effort for Clara and Steve to get through them and one of the men, a balding man with a gut his cumberbund can’t camoflauge, has the gall to run his hand up the inside of Clara’s thigh.

She comes to an abrupt stop, and her eyes turn sharp when the man’s hand stops, confusion on his face.

“Yes, that’s a gun,” she says, feeling Steve stop next to her, “and no, I’m not happy to see you.” She plucks the man’s hand off her leg and slaps it against his chest. “Don’t touch me again.”

She can feel Steve drawing himself up to full height behind her, ready to fight if she wants him to, and around them people murmur and stare.

“Ah, Clara,” Tony says, “Charming as ever.”

She plasters a smile on her face. “Tony, what a coincidence, finding you at your own party.”

She notes the way Tony’s eyes dart from her to Steve, the most surprise he’ll show surrounded by strangers.

“I wanted you to meet my friend Steve,” Clara says, the crowd parting for her now that she’s gotten Tony’s attention. “He wanted to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative. He’s got some leadership experience.”

Tony’s shocked into silence for a couple seconds before he remembers where he is, remembers that he’s got an audience, and he claps Steve on the shoulder. “Let’s go get a drink. Sounds like we have a few things to talk about.”

The two of them go off, the lingering crowd whispering about the Avengers Initiative and what it could be, and Clara finds herself at Bruce’s side.

“Sorry for chasing away your guardian,” she says.

“He attracted more attention than he deflected,” Bruce says.

He looks out of place here, in a suit that fits perfectly but still looks too big, wearing glasses that are practical, not fashionable. He inches closer to her.

“Think they’ll survive a second meeting?” Clara asks, looking back at where Steve and Tony are now at the bar, heads bent in close.

“I don’t think you would’ve brought him if you didn’t think they would.” Bruce eyes her, assessing. “What I don’t know is why you want them to.”

“Steve needs better options than he’s been given,” she says, “I’m just giving him one more to choose from.”

“And what about you?” Bruce asks.

“I’ve made my choice,” she says.

She’s a SHIELD agent. They gave her everything, and there’s no way to pay that back except to give them everything in return. 

“Hmm,” Bruce says.

If he had more to add, it doesn’t happen, because a man with a tumbler of something dark comes up to them, a sneer on his face. 

“Haven’t seen you before,” he says, looking Clara up and down. “Not that I’d remember if I did.”

A couple people are watching them, interested in seeing the person who took Tony away from them put in her place. 

“How’d you get an invite?” the man asks.

“Friend of Tony’s,” she answers. She scans the room, makes sure General Ross is still where he was last time she looked around the room. He is.

“We’re all friends of Tony’s here,” the man says with a smile Clara wants to wipe off his face.

She keeps her fists at her sides and says, “Well, I spent four months in the Afghan desert looking for him which is probably more than you’ve ever done for him.”

The smile vanishes, and Clara tucks her arm around Bruce’s, and they walk away before the man can respond. 

“I’m not very good at parties,” she says, once she and Bruce have found a slightly less crowded corner.

“Neither am I.”

“Well then,” she says, “Don’t we make a good pair.”

~*~

They’re left to their corner longer than Clara thought they’d be, but eventually General Ross makes his way over, and Clara both wishes it was Tony standing with Bruce so she didn’t have to do this and glad it’s her, because Tony would undoubtedly make the situation worse.

“Sir,” Clara says when he approaches, respectful but not proper because she’s not military, and she doesn’t owe him anything.

“Agent Barton,” he says, mouth tight.

It doesn’t surprise her that he researched her, doesn’t surprise her that he found out who she is. She’d taken out the entire team he sent after Bruce and managed to get Bruce out of his hands. What does surprise her is that after seeing everything she can do, he came over here alone.

Just because she’s in a dress doesn’t mean she’s helpless.

“How have you been?” she asks.

“Not as busy as you,” he answers then dismisses her for Bruce. “Are you sure being around this many people is safe?”

“They’re quite boring,” he says, “Nothing that gets the blood pressure up.”

“And no one’s wondering why you’ve been missing for so many years?”

“Running clinics in third world countries,” Bruce answers. “I have an interview coming out in a few days. Tony helped set it up.”

“How generous of him. He’s the one who’s going to pay the damages when you lose control?”

“I’ve got a pretty firm grip on control these days,” Bruce says. “Are you really going to spend your time harassing a man who just wants to make the world a better place? There are pictures to go with the article. Me caring for sick, orphaned children. You know how the media will lap that up.”

General Ross scowls. “There won’t be enough sick babies in the world to save you the first time you change and smash an entire city block. As soon as America sees what you truly are, they will beg for someone to lock you up, and I’ll be glad to do that particular public service.”

Beside her, Bruce stiffens, and Clara can sympathize, because being threatened with being locked up is enough to get her heart rate spiking, never mind being locked up with Ross as her jailor. She doesn’t think Bruce is going to Hulk out, but she doesn’t see any reason for them to continue this conversation.

“I think you owe me a dance, Bruce,” she says. “Just try not to step on my toes. Steve did enough of that earlier.”

“Did he?” Bruce asks, a little surprised, enough that Ross losing his attention seems natural.

Clara leads him away without even so much as a goodbye to Ross. “I think he’s not used to his feet being so big. He says he’s never been much of a dancer.”

“Nice that there’s something I’m better than him at,” Bruce says.


	10. Chapter 10

Steve starts meeting with Tony on a regular basis, and it’s the first time they don’t go everywhere together. Clara doesn’t have anything to contribute to meetings about the Avengers, and after the first time he goes, Steve doesn’t ask her again if she wants to go with him.

She’s not sure what prompts her to do it, but one evening when Steve’s at the mansion, she decides to go for a late night walk. She isn’t even looking for Spiderman, not consciously at least, but she does find him, outnumbered in an alleyway. 

There’s one guy webbed to the wall, but there are four others still free, and Spiderman can only wiggle and jump about for so long before one of them grabs his foot, hauling him down from the firescape he was trying to scale.

She watches as a second man gets an arm around Spiderman’s neck, and her breath catches as Spiderman adjusts so his throat is tucked into the crook of the man’s elbow, how he crouches then throws the man on the ground just like -

Just like she taught  _ Peter _ .

A lot of things slot into place - the constant bruises, the obsession with Spiderman, how Peter’s stopped stalking Tony for pictures and is only giving pictures of Spiderman to the  _ The Bugle _ , and she’ll have to dissect this all later because Spiderman -  _ Peter _ \- is in trouble.

She doesn’t give the guys any warning, just wades into the fight, grabbing one guy and wrestling him to the ground. 

“Hey!” she calls to Spiderman. “Some help?”

She moves out of the way in time for him to web the guy and then she grabs the next attacker and throws him against the wall. In an instant he’s webbed, too. 

The remaining two guys look from Spiderman to Clara and then rush her. She ducks, lets their momentum take them past her and then she’s on top of the one on the left, getting his arm up behind his back and shoving his face into the dirty ground.

“Spiderman’s a menace!” he hisses.

“Buddy, you don’t know shit,” she tells him. 

She keeps him pinned with her weight and one hand pushing his arm down, and uses her other arm to block the fourth man’s punch and then shove the heel of her palm into his throat. He staggers back, clutching his throat and gasping for breath.

Spiderman webs him to the wall.

Clara gets off the guy she has pinned and waves at Spiderman to do his thing.

He does, and then produces a cellphone to call it in.

“What a good Samaritan,” she says.

“Thanks for the rescue,” he says then ruins it by adding, “I didn’t need one though.”

“Uh huh,” she says, because she’d suspected that he was a kid, but she  _ knows _ this is Peter, and she wasn’t going to leave him to fend off four guys on his own. “Having help isn’t a bad thing. There’s a reason most superheroes have a sidekick.”

“Iron Man doesn’t have one.”

“That’s because Iron Man’s building himself a team,” Clara says. She regrets it immediately, because even with a mask, she can tell that Spiderman’s eyes have gone wide. “No. Not you. No joining superhero teams until after college.”

“You’re not my mom,” Spiderman says, and then actually crosses his arms over his chest.

“Thank fuck for that,” Clara says. “Toss me your phone. I’m giving you my number.”

“Why?” he asks, even as he tosses her the cell phone. “You gonna be my sidekick?”

“Hardly,” she says as she punches her name in, “but if you get yourself into trouble, I can help.” She waves to the immobilized bodies. “Consider that my resumé.”

“Where’d you learn that kind of stuff?” he asks.

Clara has to remind herself that this is Peter Parker, not Spiderman. She wasn’t going to tell Spiderman secrets, regardless, but she has to be extra careful what she tells Peter.

“I work in security,” she says. 

He snorts. “You’re friends with Iron Man.”

“I’ve worked for Tony Stark,” she corrects. “Even superheroes need security.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, catching the phone when she throws it back to him. “I get it. If I’m in over my head, I can call you. What were you doing tonight?”

“Taking a walk.” She hears the sirens coming closer. “Think that’s my cue to leave. Stay safe, Spiderman.”

~*~

When she gets home, feeling good about being in a scuffle again, getting to put her training to some actual use, she’s met with the sight of Steve, sitting at the kitchen table, staring down a bag of Dove chocolate.

Clara has a bit of a sweet tooth, but she likes it in baked goods - brownies, pie, cookies, you name it - but she keeps a couple bags of emergency chocolate for when she’s on her period and can’t be bothered to bake.

“It’s not going to bite you,” she says. “And it’s not going to blink first.”

Steve glances up at he to smile and says, “These actually any good?”

“If I say yes are you gonna eat the whole bag?”

“They had chocolate during the war,” Steve says, taking out one of the individually wrapped chocolates. “But it was nasty. They were these giant chalky bars that we at first thought were for morale but that quickly turned out not to be true. If you didn’t eat them slow they felt like they were choking you but eating them slow was just as bad.”

He turns the chocolate over in his hands. “They called them D rations. Turned out they were low in taste but high in nutritional value. We used to joke you could run ‘em over with a tank and they’d survive. When we got deep behind enemy lines, and rations were low, I had to eat a bunch to make sure I got enough calories.”

Clara’s never seen someone look so betrayed by chocolate before. “This is the good shit,” she says. “Try a piece.”

He still looks reluctant as he unwraps the foil, but as soon as he pops it in his mouth, his eyes widen and he’s looking at the bag like it has all the secrets of the universe.

“See,” Clara says, “There’s such thing as good chocolate. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s some nasty stuff out there, too, but you won’t find it in this apartment.”

She sits down with him at the table and pulls out her own piece of chocolate. 

“Have a good meeting?” she asks. “Any repulsor burns I need to take a look at?”

“We’ve been getting along better,” Steve says. “He’s just...a little too sharp sometimes. And I’m not good at backing down. But if we’re going to work together we need to learn to get along.”

“So, you’re going to be an Avenger,” she says, ignoring the way her stomach sinks at the thought. “Makes sense. You  _ are  _ the original superhero. Bet that pisses Tony off.”

“I’ve made sure to console him that he’s at least the flashiest,” Steve says with a quick grin. “Of course, then he starts playing clips from my USO tour. Where were you tonight?”

“Oh, went for a walk. I don’t usually go this long without a mission. I’m starting to get antsy.”

“You went for a walk?”

“Good night for it. All the snow’s melted from the last flurry. Wasn’t even that chilly.”

She thinks about telling him about Peter, explaining why the bruises keep coming, how it has nothing to do with school, but she watches Steve unwrap another chocolate and holds her tongue. Everyone’s got secrets, she knows that better than most, and she knows that just because they’re not her secrets doesn’t mean she can give them away.

Peter has her number and he has Tony’s, and if he gets in over his head there are people he can ask for help. Following him around the city’ll just piss him off and make him reckless. 

“Alright,” Steve says, “Be mysterious. And put chocolate on the list. I think I’m going to eat all of this tonight.”

“Fuck you,” Clara says, but she gets up and adds chocolate to their list. 

She also snags a couple chocolates from the bag, because while she’s gotten better at sharing her food, she’s not going to let him eat all of it. 

~*~

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Clara says, bringing sandwiches to Coulson’s office, because he doesn’t eat as well as he should, and he’s busy so if she wants to chat with him then it has to be on the lunch break she suspects he doesn’t take as often as he should.

She drops one of the sandwiches on his desk, and it’s wrapped so it doesn’t get his papers dirty, but it does cause the pile to slide alarmingly to the left.

Coulson picks the sandwich up and straightens his stack of papers. “Could you be more specific?”

She glares at him and his steady hands his mild voice and how nothing ever fucking ruffles him.

“I’m assuming you know you’re here for lunch,” he continues, like he doesn’t realize there’s an itch under her skin that demands she tear this entire office apart.

He opens his bottom desk drawer and pulls out a bag of pretzels, and all the fight goes out of her, because it’s impossible to be angry with Coulson. 

“I’m playing house with Captain America,” she says. “I’m mentoring a reckless kid who got bit by a spider and decided that means he should be saving the city from petty thieves. I’m a  _ liaison _ to Tony fucking Stark. I’m a SHIELD agent, Coulson. Let me do my job.”

“You are doing your job,” he says. “You’re doing exactly what we want you to do.”

“I’m not -” she struggles for the word she wants - “ _ domestic _ . Put me back in the field. I’ve talked to Wilson. I’ve learned how to work a dishwasher. I’m a functioning human being. Let psych sign off on me and let me  _ do something _ .”

“This isn’t a punishment,” Coulson tells her. “And you were cleared for duty a long time ago. You wouldn’t be working with Captain Rogers if you weren’t.”

“I want to go back in the field,” she says.

She’s been getting antsy the last few days. She’s prowled the streets, not to look for Spiderman, but to find herself a fight. She’s sparred with Steve, and spent more time in SHIELD’s training gyms than she has in a long time. 

Coulson looks her over, steady, waiting her out.

“The apartment was a shit idea,” she says. “Our dishwasher could wake the dead.”

Getting a permanent home was stupid. There’s no such thing as permanent. She misses her quarters, misses having a room so bare that it was obvious it was only for sleeping. She misses having a place where she couldn’t keep a week’s worth of oranges or salsa that would expire in a month, because she never knew when she was going to get called away for a mission.

An apartment, a roommate, none of that’s ever going to last, and she’s getting soft, because sometimes she believes it can.

But - SHIELD isn’t a given, either. Isn’t that what Fury taught her when he took her badge away? Screw up and they’ll send her away. Sure, they can bring her back, can give her a pat on the head and a new badge and tell her she’s earned her place back, but that’s not the same as knowing it’s hers no matter what happens.

“You can get a new one,” Coulson says. 

“Dishwasher or apartment?” 

He stops unwrapping his sandwich to look at her, really look at her like he’s just figured out there’s something wrong. 

“I think Steve’s going to end up on Tony’s side,” she says, because maybe if he realizes how badly she’s screwed up she’ll confine her to base. Maybe they’ll strip her badge away from her again, and she’ll have to move out of the city, find a new place to nest. 

“It’s looking likely,” Coulson says. 

“Fury gonna fire me for that?” She fiddles with the wax paper her sandwich’s wrapped in. 

“Captain Rogers isn’t interested in working for SHIELD,” Coulson says. “And it turns out he’s stubborn.” Coulson smiles but Clara doesn’t smile back. “It’s not your fault he thinks the Avengers are a better option. And it’s not all that surprising if you take into account the fact that he led the Howling Commandos. Traditional command structure isn’t his style, no matter what the history books might want you to believe.”

“Still didn’t answer my question,” she says.

“You won’t be blamed for Captain Rogers’s actions,” Coulson tells her. “And Stark and SHIELD, while they don’t always get along, they’re not on different sides. The Avengers are going to work with SHIELD.”

Clara scoffs.

“ _ With _ ,” Coulson says, “Not for.”

Clara unwraps her sandwich. “Can I go back to being a trainee?”

“I’m too old to chase you through ceiling vents,” Coulson says.

“You never chased me. You stood in empty rooms and scolded me until I came down.”

“Is that how it happened?” Coulson asks. “My memory must be going.”

“You’re not that old,” she tells him, even though she’s started waking up in the mornings with aches she didn’t have before, and if she’s starting to feel rundown then surely Coulson must as well.

~*~

One of the reasons Clara and Dr. Suresh never got along was that he was convinced she had abandonment issues that created an unhealthy obsession with SHIELD and her job. What Dr. Suresh never understood is that you can’t have abandonment issues if you’ve never been abandoned.

She and Barney left their parents before they could get kicked out or end up wrapped around a tree like their parents did. They packed their school bags and they left, joining up with a circus. Clara left Barney after that afternoon in the trailer, when she figured out what Barney and Trick were up to. Maybe the circus would’ve dumped her when she get too old, when her act wasn’t exciting anymore, but she’ll never know because she left before they could do it.

She’s not afraid of people leaving her, because she’s always made sure she controlled when she left.

But her apartment is hers; she found it, she paid for it with her money, and she’s been teaching Ruth how to do the monkey bars on the little gymnastics set-up they’ve got on the roof, and Clara’s not giving any of that up.

“So,” Clara says, coming back to the apartment one afternoon after a long chat with Fury that miraculously didn’t end up with her losing her badge again. “The Avengers.”

Steve looks up from the stove where he’s scrambling what looks like about six eggs. There’s a soft smile on his face, something proud. “Yeah. I’m going to get to lead a team again.”

“Cool,” she says. 

“Hey,” he begins, but she cuts him off.

“Probably hard to respond to crises when you’re not all in the same place,” she says. She goes into the hallway to drag in the boxes she’d taken from recycling. “And there’s no space to land any kind of jet on our roof.”

Steve looks from the boxes to her, a frown pulling between his eyes. “Clara -”

“I’m going out,” she says, because anyone who can talk Tony into giving up control of his superhero fantasy team is someone she can’t let talk, “I want you gone by the time I get back. It won’t be until late so no need to rush. And you bought groceries this week so take whatever shit you want from the cupboards.”

She leaves him standing there, mouth hanging open stupidly, his eggs over cooking.

She goes to the Parkers’, because she’s pissed at SHIELD for putting her in this situation to begin with, because no fucking way is she going to Stark, because she desperately wants someone to hug her, and that’s exactly what May does when Clara shows up on her doorstep, angry and with tears burning in her eyes.

“Oh, honey,” she says and ushers Clara in before wrapping her up in a hug.

Ben’s started working again, cleared by his doctor to sit at a desk, and Peter’s off either with his girlfriend or being Spiderman, which means it’s just Clara and May, and it means Clara can crumple in her arms and not worry about what anyone’s going to say.

“Steve moved out,” Clara finally says, after her tears have soaked through May’s sweater, and it’s not true, not really, but May holds her tighter and Clara can’t take the lie back.

Because Steve doesn’t move out so much as Clara kicks him out, and when she gets back to the apartment late that night, his room is sparse and clean, but the cupboards are all full. Probably because living with Stark means not having to worry about things as mundane as groceries.

Clara floats through her apartment feeling like a ghost, always coming back to the doorway to Steve’s room and staring at the bed until she realizes what she’s doing and shakes herself out of it.

She’s better off without him here, just like she was better off without her parents, better off without Barney and Trick. When you’re alone, no one can turn on you. You don’t have to hide, you don’t have to keep quiet when you get hit, and you don’t have to listen to lies. It’s just you, and it’s better.

That night, Clara dreams about Barney, about sticking her knife in him and yanking, only when she looks up to watch him die, it’s Steve eyes staring lifelessly back at her.

She wakes up screaming, someone pounding on the door to her apartment, telling her to shut the fuck up.

She moves back into SHIELD. The walls there are thick enough to block out the worst nightmares.

When she finishes putting her things away, she sits down on the standard SHIELD twin bed and laughs, because after all that she lost her apartment anyways.

~*~

“So,” Clara says, dropping into Coulson’s office - no sandwiches this time - two days after coming back to SHIELD.

She’s got blisters on her hands from too much time on the rock wall and a bruise on her arm where she didn’t bother strapping her armguard on. Even though her hands are clasped behind her back, she thinks Coulson knows.

“Where am I going first?” she asks. “Heard South America’s shaky right now. And the Middle East is always a bit of a mess.” She holds up a hand to forestall his protests. “I’m sure it can’t be that hard to find a new liaison between SHIELD and the Avengers.”

“Already taken care of,” Coulson says. 

He’s watching her like she’s something wild, something feral. He’s never done that before, not even when he scooped her up off the streets and she was wild. Not even after Budapest when she didn’t think she’d be able to claw herself back to humanity. 

He’s watching her like he doesn’t know what she’s going to do next, and any other time she might feel a bit of satisfaction at stumping him, but right now it just makes her sick. 

“Who is it?” she asks. “Sitwell? He’d hate it. Hill? She might be the only one who’d put up with Tony’s shit.”

“Me,” Coulson says, and the smile slips right off Clara’s face. “I’m the official handler for the Avengers.”

She wants to say no, say you can’t because you’re  _ mine _ , but that’s not how things work. She’s his agent, but that’s not the same as him being her handler. It’s -

She swallows past the lump in her throat. “Guess that probably won’t give you much time for other stuff.”

Other agents.

_ Me _ .

“Stark is very demanding,” Coulson agrees.

Normally, she’d laugh because Coulson doesn’t like Stark, lets him get under Coulson’s skin the way nothing else can, but there’s nothing funny about this. She’d prepared herself for losing Steve, made sure she was the one to push away first, but she’s not ready to lose Coulson.

This is probably why they won’t let her back in the field.

Too stupid to come up with a plan.

Too stupid to see all the ways things can go wrong.

What use is a sniper that can’t  _ see _ ?

“Well,” Clara says. She’s off balance, and she’s sure Coulson can see it, “Guess I’ll let you get back to your important new job. Who should I report to now?”

“You’re still my agent.”

“You can’t take me on missions when you’re babysitting the Avengers.”

“No, but you’re not in a good place to be going anywhere right now,” Coulson tells her. “I’m putting you in charge of firearms training for the new recruits. Not as glamorous as being swarmed by piranha monkeys in the Amazon but still important.”

“I’m not looking for glamor,” she says. She’s looking for  _ purpose _ . To be  _ useful _ . But there’s no arguing with Coulson so she just sighs and says, “When do I start, sir?”

~*~

It takes a week of ignoring all of Steve and Tony’s phone calls, texts, and emails for them to stop bothering her. If it had gone on much longer, she was going to tell Coulson to tell them to leave her alone, but the situation resolves itself, and she doesn’t have to reduce Coulson to messenger or smash up her phone.

Honestly, the only thing keeping her from smashing up her phone anyways is the fact that she gave Spiderman her number, and what if there was an emergency and he couldn’t get in contact with her?

Anyways, she spends a week dodging phone calls and then another week refusing to go anywhere she’d gone with Steve before she reminds herself it wasn’t a damn break-up and goes to the VA.

“Hey stranger,” Wilson says, “You missed the group session.”

Clara shrugs. She hadn’t really come here to talk to anyone but him. “Gym still open?”

“Yeah, I’m not falling for that again,” Wilson says.

He’d been awed, then outraged when he figured out that Steve was really Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, and that all the times he’d gotten his ass kicked in the gym he hadn’t stood a chance at all. 

“ _ I’m _ not hopped up on super soldier serum,” she says. “I’m just more fit than you. It’s alright, old man.”

“Speaking of our resident old supersoldier,” Wilson begins.

“No,” she says and heads towards the gym. “I didn’t come here to talk.”

“You didn’t come here for the facility, because SHIELD’s got a better one. And you didn’t come here for the competition because, again, SHIELD. Which really only leaves one reason for you to be here. The only question is, did you wait for Steve to leave the group session before coming in or did you just happen to show up when he wasn’t here?”

Clara pulls off her sweatshirt and gets on the rowing machine. “You wanna race or what?”

“He’s been hanging around looking sad,” Wilson says, getting on the rowing machine next to her. “I think the flowers are wilting.”

“It’s winter,” Clara says, kicking up her resistance and then starting to row. “There are no flowers.” She pushes with her legs, big powerful movements that feel good even if it’s not as good as a rooftop chase. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Let’s start with the apartment.”

“He should be living with his team,” Clara says. “That’s special teams 101.”

“He wanted to have dinner with you but when he got up to 2E there was a new tenant.”

Well, that got re-rented fast. “My mission was to acclimate him to the 21st century. Mission over, I went back to base.”

She syncs up her movements, extending her legs then pulling her arms in, falling into the easy rhythm of the machine. 

“I’m worried about you,” Sam says. “You’re withdrawing.”

“You’re starting to sound like a therapist again,” she says.

“You might want to think about seeing one,” he says. 

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” she says and then promptly loses the rhythm of the machine and yanks her arms too soon, her legs not helping with the resistance, and it’s a bright spot of pain that has her pulling the straps of her feet and getting off the machine.

“Oh yeah,” Sam says, “You’re fine, alright.”

“I just need to go back in the field,” she says. “There’s where I’m at my best. Now that I’m done babysitting the thawed wonder, I can get back to where I belong. Maybe this is another test. Maybe I need to update my file. I’ve gotten pretty good at killing people. Maybe -” her throat’s getting tight again.

She rubs her shoulder and wanders over to the free weights. She touches the fives then the tens, drags her fingers over the fifteens. 

Sam’s still on his rower, not moving, just watching her. 

She wonders if this is what animals in the zoo feel like.

“I just need to get back in the field,” she repeats.

“You’re more than just a sniper,” Sam tells her.

“Wow, thanks for that pep talk,” she says. She hefts the forty pound dumbbells off the rack. “It’s better if they just put me somewhere and tell me where to shoot. I screw everything else up.”

“I don’t think you’d be in SHIELD if that were the case,” Sam says, mild, like Coulson except he’s not Coulson, and Clara glares at him.

“I was sent to keep Tony Stark alive and now he’s forming the Avengers. I was on mandatory leave because I’m a head case and I find Bruce Banner but he sides with Tony. I’m in charge of introducing Steve Rogers to the 21st century and instead of getting him on SHIELD’s side, he goes with Tony, too. If I hadn’t chased Thor off planet by drunk crying all over him then he’d probably be an Avenger by now too. The only person that hasn’t defected because of me is Natasha, and -” 

Clara snaps her mouth shut. She’s not allowed to talk about what Natasha’s doing. Not even to Sam. 

Clara takes a deep breath and plants one knee on the bench and one foot on the floor and starts lifting the dumbbell. 

“Are the Avengers so bad?” Sam asks.

Clara doesn’t bother with a glare this time. “I’m not a superhero. I’m a SHIELD agent.”

“I don’t think Bruce would label himself a superhero,” Sam says, “and it’s not like the Avengers are completely separate from SHIELD. Isn’t Coulson their liaison?”

“Are you trying to get me to defect?” Clara demands.

“Defect’s a strong word,” Sam says. “I’m just saying - why not consider it?”

“I  _ have _ a job,” she says. She switches to lifting with her left arm. “I am proud to be an agent of SHIELD. I don’t need to be anything else.”

“Do you want to be?”

Clara whirls around, ready to throw the dumbbell at his head, but Sam’s perfectly calm, watching her like this is a normal conversation to be having and not some kind of betrayal of the past ten years of her life. 

“I owe SHIELD everything,” she says. “I’m not ditching because something flashier’s come on the scene.”

“Steve was created by the Army, but he left.”

“I’m not Captain America,” Clara says, and isn’t that the truth. “And you aren’t getting it. SHIELD found me in the streets. I was surviving, but they gave me a  _ life _ . They gave me the opportunity to be something. The only way to repay being given everything is to give them everything back.”

“That’s not healthy,” Sam tells her.

Probably not, but, “It’s the way it is.”

She reracks her weights, because no matter how angry she is, she can follow proper gym etiquette, and then she storms out of the building. Sam doesn’t try to stop her. She wishes he had. She could use a good fight right about now.


	11. Chapter 11

Clara’s at the range, mechanically firing arrows into a target when her phone rings. It’s an uncommon enough occurrence that she immediately picks up.

“Barton,” she answers.

“It’s Spiderman,” Peter says, a hint of panic in his voice. “I need help.”

“Of course,” Clara says, already headed towards where Agent Oshie sits at his desk to scan agents in and equip them with weapons. “Where and with what?”

“Oscorp. Giant lizard. I messed up so bad. I -”

“There isn’t time for blame or doubt,” she tells him, and if she’d forgotten how young he is, how new he is at this, how utterly unprepared; well, that waver in his voice is a good reminder. “Tell me what I need to know.”

She turns her attention to Oshie for a minute. He’s a good agent, big blue eyes, curls that some of the juniors giggle about, and when she tells him she needs a full combat quiver, he darts a glance to her phone and then hands it over, no questions asked.

“And I didn’t clean up my stall,” she says.

“I got it,” he promises.

She hurries to her room while Peter breaks down what he knows. An Oscorp doctor - Dr. Connors - injected himself with an untested serum (when are people going to  _ stop _ doing that?) and now apparently turns into a giant lizard that was content terrorizing the sewers and has now decided he’s  _ lonely  _ and wants an entire city of lizard friends.

“Fucking Oscorp,” she mutters, changing into a standard jumpsuit. She straps her quiver to her back and tucks her collapsed bow into her sleeve.

“You’re gonna have to tell me why you hate them so much,” Peter says.

“When this is done,” Clara promises. “Are you already enroute to Oscorp?”

“Yeah. Just swinging through the city.”

She jogs down to the garage where she looks over her options before picking a motorcycle. She’s going to need to be fast but also agile. If there’s really a giant lizard terrorizing one of the tallest buildings in the city then there's going to be a crowd and a police barricade, and she needs to be able to get through it.

“Any chance you’ll wait to engage until I get there?”

“No.”

Worth a shot. “Alright. Try not to get yourself killed. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

There’s a moment of silence, and she’s afraid maybe she pushed too far and then Peter says, “Does this mean you’re my sidekick?”

“Not a chance,” she says, swinging a leg over her bike and gunning it out of the garage. “Is this the same lizard that was sighted on the bridge and then Midtown High?”

“Yeah,” Peter says.

Clara  _ told _ Coulson SHIELD should look into a mutated lizard when they knew that Oscorp was involved in cross-species genetics, but they had assured her it was handled, and she didn’t need to get involved and - well, now she’s involved. 

“Look,” Peter says, and there’s that waver in his voice again. “My - there’s someone I care about in Oscorp, and I have to get there before Dr. Connors can hurt her.”

Clara doubts it’s May which means it must be his girlfriend, Gwen. Why couldn’t Spiderman stick to chasing down muggers and catcallers? Why couldn’t he leave the mutated lizards for people like SHIELD or the Avengers?

The thought of Peter taking on that monster by himself - spandex and webbing aside - makes her speed even faster down the road. She’d been training Peter to stand up to bullies. She hadn’t realized she was training Spiderman. If she had - well, she’d’ve taught him a lot more than how to break a few holds.

“Get her and get out,” Clara says. “Leave the rest to me.”

“I can’t,” Peter says. “I can’t. This was my fault. I need to fix it.”

“You need to stay alive is what you need to do,” she growls, and she wonders if this is how Coulson felt every time she leapt off a building or told him  _ no really, I can do this _ before charging head first into a near death experience. 

She gets to the police barricade and pulls her ID out of her uniform to flash it at them. “SHIELD,” she says. “Let me through.”

The officers take one look at her catsuit and her quiver and exchange smirks. “And what’re you going to do, honey?”

“What I always do,” she says. “Shoot it. Now let me through.”

“We -”

“Fuck this,” she says and leaves the motorcycle where it is and runs the rest of the way to Oscorp.

“Did you really just say fuck the police?” Peter asks.

“You’re a child,” she reminds him, “Use cleaner language.”

The building is unlocked and she takes a chance and gets in the elevator. If it doesn’t work then she’ll pop the ceiling and climb up the emergency ladder, but she won’t have a whole lot of energy if she has to run up 8 million flights of stairs to get to the top of the building.

“Yes  _ mom _ ,” he says and she can hear the eyeroll. “Okay. Gotta go now. Need both hands for lizard fighting.”

He hangs up and she sends a text off to Coulson, telling him where she is, what she’s doing, and then the elevator dings to let her know she’s on the top floor, and it’s business time. The phone gets zipped into a pocket, and she pulls out her bow but doesn’t snap it open until she’s taken the roof access stairs and she’s back in the open air and - yep, that’s a giant mutated lizard.

It’s clinging to the spire of the building, climbing up towards some sort of machine, and Clara’s no scientist, but the neon green serum in its hand can’t be anything good.

She grabs an arrow and fires it, blasting the vial right out of the thing’s hand. The vial breaks, of course, but the serum doesn’t appear to have any added effect on the lizard. 

Spiderman cheers her from where he’s crouched next to a man in an NYPD uniform.

“What part of get the girl and get out did you not understand?” Clara demands, rushing over to them, but keeping a careful eye on the lizard who now has  _ another _ vial in his hands. 

She shoots that one out too.

“Girl is saved. Now I have to save the girl’s father,” Spiderman says.

“Captain Stacy,” the man says, “and I don’t need rescuing. Especially from someone in spandex.”

Clara looks down at her outfit. “How about someone in spandex but with a badge?” She looks up and, “For fuck’s sake,” she says and shoots a third vial from the lizard’s grasp. “How many of the damn things does he have?”

“You’re one to scold about language,” Peter says.

Clara focuses, because there’s a time for banter and a time for figuring out a plan, and she knows how to prioritize. “Bullets have any effect?”

“No,” Captain Stacy says.

“Webbing?”

“Not really,” Peter says.

Which means her arrows probably aren’t going to do much good. “Alright,” she says. “Spiderman, you get Captain Stacy out of here.”

“And let you have all the fun?” Peter asks.

“Absolutely not,” Captain Stacy says. “I -”

“Have bullets that are worth jack shit.” Clara draws another arrow and breaks the next vial. “This is going to go one of two ways; easy or messy, and I don’t want anyone else here. Spiderman, you take him down or I’ll tell him who you are.”

It’s dirty pool, it’s the dirtiest pool, and Peter gasps and says, “How’d you figure it out?”

“Because I’m not an idiot,” she snaps. The lizard has run out of vials, and it’s looking around now for why that’s the case, and she needs this rooftop cleared  _ now _ . “So you two swing your way out of here and let me handle this.”

“You haven’t been shooting him,” Peter says. “Your arrows aren’t any better than bullets.”

“I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve,” Clara says. “And I’ve got back-up coming. Now,  _ go _ .”

They go, just in time for the lizard to come crashing down on the roof proper, and Clara fires a regular arrow at it just to see what will happen. It bounces harmlessly off, and now she’s got the full attention of a pissed-off mutated lizard that’s immune to paralytic arrows. 

“Heya,” Clara says, “Did you know that I know another grumpy green guy that got to be grumpy and green because of some ill-advised steroids?”

The lizard hisses, advancing on her until either she rolls off the top of a skyscraper or tries to get by him. She goes with the second option. She dives between his legs, popping up on the other side of him, and she’s about to congratulate herself when she gets knocked over by his tail.

Fucking scientists, she thinks, as she gets batted across the roof. She catches herself at the edge, uses years and years of training to flip herself back onto the roof, and puts her hands on her hips.

“That wasn’t very nice,” she says. “Here I am, trying to bond with you and -”

“Shut up,” the lizard tells her.

“Oh! You can talk. Does that mean there’s still some of Dr. Connors in there or are you thinking with your lizard brain?”

This time when the lizard hisses, he sprays spittle in a wide arc and some of it lands on her face, and she wipes it off, hoping it’s not going to turn  _ her _ into a lizard. Green isn’t her color.

“Rude,” she says, and then has to dodge as he comes after her again.

She’s not quite sure what her plan is. Is she distracting the lizard until backup arrives? Does she try an exploding arrow and just hope it works because if it doesn’t she’s screwed?

She dodges the sharp claws that try to rip her open, and she escapes the feet that want to pound her through the roof, but there just isn’t a whole lot of real estate up here, and it’s the damn tail that gets her again.

It whips into her, and it feels like getting a 2x4 to the stomach, and she goes flying, past the edge of the roof this time, and she’s glad Coulson isn’t on the comms, glad she doesn’t still have Peter on the phone, because there’s no one in her ear yelling at her for dying.

She’s about to start falling at any moment, and it’s a long, long way down, when she has a thought.

Not a good one, but, she’s not going down alone.

She gets her arrow nocked, gets it fired, and the grappling hook punches through the lizard’s thick skin and embeds in its body, and Clara smashes into a bunch of windows as her rope keeps her from plummeting to her death. Well, her rope and the fact that the lizard doesn’t want to go tumbling off the edge of the tower.

“Ow,” she says scrunching up her face to make sure she can still feel her cheeks. Her nose might be broken - is probably broken - but the glass didn’t break. Go Oscorp, not skimping on the industrial materials.

She’s hanging off the top of the building - all she needs is a wiper and she could clean the windows - when the rope tugs and she’s being lifted and she realizes the very real flaw in her plan.

“Aww, no,” she says as the lizard starts swinging the rope - and her - around until he can throw her into the rooftop. 

She slams into it, face first, and if her nose wasn’t broken before, it definitely is now. There’s a searing pain in her shoulder and the blunt, steady pain everywhere else that means when she wakes up tomorrow - if she wakes up - she’s in for a world of hurt.

She peels herself off the roof, and unclips her carabiner so the lizard can’t use that trick again. Of course, it means she can’t go over the edge again or else it really is the end.

Which means no more stalling for time.

No more hoping someone comes and subdues the thing.

She rolls out of the way of the lizard’s tail as it tries to snap down on her, and draws another special arrow. It hurts too much to say something pithy, but she consoles herself with the fact that she gave him a fair chance before letting loose her arrow. 

The arrow punches into the healing skin around the grappling hook, and the lizard looks down at the blinking red light before looking at her, horrified, and she grins, blood staining her teeth.

Not going down alone, she thinks, before the explosion rattles her bones. 

She got her ears covered in time at least, and she presses her palms as tight to her head as possible hoping she won’t blow out her eardrums, and she wishes she had a poncho or something as bits of lizard flesh rain down on her. 

She wishes she had the energy to throw up, because, seriously  _ lizard flesh _ , but then she’s glad she doesn’t because she’s on her back on the roof and doesn’t have the energy to move and would probably choke, but still. Gross.

Once she feels that it’s safe, she opens her eyes, and her first thought is that she wished she wasn’t in New York because then maybe she could see some stars.

But that’s a stupid thought, and she’s searching for a new one when she sees a familiar face land on the roof.

“You’re late,” she tells Coulson or, she thinks she tells him. Her mouth moves, but she doesn’t hear any sound. Oh, she’s still covering her ears. She tries to drop her hands, but it’s like her body’s locked up on her, and she doesn’t have the key.

Coulson’s mouth is moving, but she can’t hear anything. She can’t even nod. But he’s here, which means everything’s going to be okay, which means she can close her eyes. 

~*~

She wakes up in medical, which isn’t much of a surprise.

There’s a steady pulse of hurt even through all the medication she’s on which isn’t much a surprise either.

And, just as she would expect, Coulson is sitting next to her bed.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she rasps.

Coulson looks up from his book and smiles, wrinkles around his eyes that didn’t used to be there. “I agree.”

She can hear his voice, and it’s a relief, because she’d only temporarily lost her hearing, and she wonders if she should make earplugs a part of her standard kit for the next time she has to use an explosive arrow that close.

There’s a muffled sound from the doorway, and Clara looks over to see Peter standing in the doorway, hand clamped over his mouth, and she’s got a couple jokes about how she looks like her face had a date with a rooftop but then she remembers the last time he was in a hospital he was probably clutching his uncle’s hand and hoping he didn’t die so instead she gives a little wave.

“Hey, Junior.”

“Here,” Coulson says, standing up, giving Peter his chair. “I need another coffee.”

“But -” Peter looks between the two of them, torn, unsure of his welcome.

“He’s done this quite a bit,” Clara says. “Now you get a turn.”

She has a cup of ice chips and she fishes one out, careful of her IVs and the clampy thing they always put on her finger. The cold feels good in her mouth, feels even better in her throat as she sucks the water out of the ice.

“You,” Peter twists his hands in his lap, and even though he’s sitting he’s still not still, hands moving, toe tapping, a bundle of restless energy that makes Clara want to get up and move even though she knows she’s stuck here for a good long while. “You got hurt for me.”

“I got hurt doing my job,” she says.

“Yeah.” He frowns at her. “You’re a secret agent?”

“Just agent,” she says, “and you’re not one to judge about secret identities.”

He flushes at that, ducking his head. “How’d you know? When’d you know?”

“The night I gave you my number,” she says. “I saw you use one of the moves I taught you and suddenly a lot of things made sense. If it makes you feel better, I feel a little stupid for not seeing it sooner.”

“I wanted to do it on my own,” he says, “and not because I wanted all the glory or whatever, but because other people shouldn’t get hurt fighting my fights.”

There’s that guilt again, plain across his face as he looks at her.

“Junior,” she says, and then pauses, holding up her hand for him to see, “See those bite marks there? A piranha monkey. Oscorp’s been experimenting with cross-species genetics for a long time, and this wasn’t my first rodeo.”

She gets herself another ice chip. “I’m glad it was me up there and not you.”

“But -”

“Did you save your girlfriend?” she asks.

He nods.

“Did you save your girlfriend’s dad?”

He nods again.

“You called me when you were in over your head, and you kept yourself safe and the people you care about safe. That’s not anything to hang your head about.”

“I care about  _ you _ ,” he says, like he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t get it.

“And I’m alive and talking to you,” she says. “If your standard of a good fight is that no one gets hurt then you’re going to burn out real quick. Me? I settle for everyone making it out alive.”

She knows, but she doesn’t add, that one day she’s not going to come out if it alive. She’s going to be too slow or whatever she’s fighting is going to be too big. One day, her luck’s going to run out, but it wasn’t last night or the night before (she’s still not sure how long she’s been here).

“I’m the one who called you.”

“And I’m glad you did. This isn’t on you.” She reaches her hand out as far as she can (not far) but Peter scooches to the edge of his chair so he can grip it with one of his. “It was my choice to pick up the phone, my choice to come help you. It was my choice to do it without bringing a team with me, and it was my choice to take the lizard on by myself.  _ My _ choice. Nothing that happened to me was your fault. You can blame me or you can blame the lizard but don’t blame yourself.”

“Dr. Connors,” Peter says, his hand pulling back from hers. “All the news coverage is calling him The Lizard like he’s comic book villain. He’s - he  _ was _ \- a man. He made a bad choice, but -”

“Making bad choices doesn’t stop you from being human,” Clara finishes for him. She withdraws her hand, tucks it against the railing of her bed, out of sight. It’s easier to think of him as a mutated lizard than a man, easier to think that she killed something evil rather than a man who did something stupid. 

But Peter doesn’t need her guilt, not right now, not on top of his own, so she doesn’t let herself linger on thoughts of adding another body to her tally.

“Debatable,” a voice says from the doorway, a familiar voice, one she hasn’t heard in way too long and -

“Natasha?” Clara breathes, unable to believe it even though that’s Natasha standing just inside her room. Natasha with her beautiful red hair, and all-too-seeing eyes and curl to her lips like she knows all the secrets of the universe and she might tell you them, if she feels like it.

“Fuck,” Clara says, and there are tears in her eyes, and she doesn’t even care because, “You’re back.”

“Two days late it seems,” she says. She comes into the room, puts her hand over Clara’s and doesn’t flinch away when she feels the tension there - the weight of what Clara did to Dr. Connors, the weight of everything Clara’s been through while Natasha’s been gone.

“What, you were gonna kiss him and turn him into a prince?” Clara asks with a laugh.

“Or just slit his throat,” Natasha answers.

Peter makes a choked sort of sound from his chair and - oh, right. 

“Junior, meet the reason why I call you Junior. This is the Black Widow. The OG if you will.”

“Please stop using high school slang,” Peter says, but his eyes don’t leave Natasha; awe, fear, and old-fashioned lust in his gaze. 

“I heard you found a little spider,” Natasha says. “I didn’t realize you meant this little.”

Clara - it’s selfish but she doesn’t want to talk about Peter anymore. She kind of wants to forget about him, because it’s been  _ two years _ and she finally has Natasha back.

“You’re back for real?” Clara asks.

“I did what I set out to do,” Natasha answers, probably the most information Clara will ever get on the mission, but that’s how it works between them. Natasha’s the one with the secrets, and that’s why Clara can freely hand all of hers over, because she trusts Natasha to hold onto them as fiercely as she holds onto her others. 

“And you’re not hurt?” 

Natasha pulls her shirt up, revealing a scar splashed across her abdomen. “Someone tried to shoot a man I was protecting through me. You can touch it.”

Clara didn’t realize her hand was hovering over Natasha’s skin until she’s given permission, but she wastes no time tracing her fingers over the scar, making sure the skin has actually healed, that Natasha’s organs aren’t going to begin spilling out at any moment. She’s whole, she’s okay, and she’s back.

Clara’s world feels like it’s finally aligning again. 

“I, um, I’m going to go,” Peter says, already out of his chair. “Can - Uncle Ben and Aunt May wanted to stop by sometime. Bring flowers. That okay?”

“Of course,” Clara says. “Just warn them, I look a lot worse than I feel.”

Natasha touches the bandage on Clara’s nose - she definitely broke it - and says, “Only because of all the drugs you’re on. You’ll feel worse once they start weaning you off.”

“Thanks,” Clara says, sarcastic, but Natasha takes it as genuine, and waves off the chair Peter tries to give her.

“You’re more lucid,” Natasha says, toeing off her shoes and getting into the narrow hospital bed with Clara. “But you’re still on the drugs. It makes the nightmares harder to break.”

“So you’re going to chase them away?” Clara asks, and even if there’s doubt in her voice, she still feels something in her settle when Natasha lies next to her, warm, reassuring.

Well, until Natasha’s hand slide up to rest at her throat, the way they used to, the way they did before, but it’s not before anymore.

“No,” Clara says, because even though there’s no pressure, even though Natasha’s hand is slim, her fingers manicured and nothing like the large calloused one that tried to choke the life out of her - Clara can’t. She just can’t. “I’m sorry.”

Natasha just drapes her arm around Clara’s waist like that’s where she intended it to be all along. “Things happened while I was gone.”

No shit, Clara thinks. 

“You were gone for two years,” Clara says. She doesn’t mean for it to be an accusation, or maybe she does. Either way, that  _ is _ how it comes out. “I’m not the same person you left.”

“No,” Natasha agrees.

Clara wants to be, wishes she could wind back Dr. Connors and kicking Steve out and having a place of her own only to lose it again. She wishes she could erase South America with Tony and the rooftop - the  _ fucking _ rooftop where she killed her brother - but she can’t. She lived through it all, and each thing has left its mark on her, has shaped her into this person who looks like Clara Barton, who  _ is _ Clara Barton, just not the one she was before.

“Does that mean no more Klarushka?” Natasha asks.

And - oh. No one’s called her that since Natasha left - why would they? - and the name makes something clench in her chest, a sharp pain that’s contrasted against the dull aching the rest of her feels.

“Just today,” Clara says and they both know it’s a lie. 

Natasha smooths the hair off of Clara’s forehead and presses a gentle kiss there. “Go to sleep, Klarushka. I will watch over you, and when you’re better, you’ll tell me what happened while I was gone.”

“I’m glad I didn’t kill you,” Clara says, when what she means is she doesn’t know what she would do without Natasha, what she means is she knows exactly what she would do and there’s a reason the past two years were so hard. Clara means a dozen things but she also means what she said.

“Shh,” Natasha says.

It’s been too long since she’s had someone at her back while she slept, or maybe someone upped her pain meds, because Clara slips into sleep faster than she has in weeks, and she doesn’t stir with a single nightmare.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Thank you for reading : )

She’s far enough into her recovery that she can get up and move around even if she’s still technically supposed to be on bed rest when Tony Stark shows up in her hospital room.

She doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Coulson refused him entry until Clara could run away if she wanted to.

Tony brings Steve and Bruce with him, and Bruce puts a small bouquet of flowers on the table that’s littered with goofy cards from other SHIELD agents and the plastic flowers Ben had brought because, “It doesn’t look like you’re getting out of here anytime soon and flowers die quick”. 

Steve hands her a bag of chocolate and then retreats behind Bruce and Tony like he’s not sure he’s wanted here.

Clara has a strong, sudden wish for the drugs they’ve all but weaned her off of.

“Since I’m a gift myself, I didn’t bring anything,” Tony tells her.

“I’d expect nothing else,” she says.

If she pressed the call nurse button, would a nurse or Natasha show up first?

“How’d you get to Oscorp so fast?” Tony asks. “By the time we realized what was going on, everything was done.”

“Spiderman’s got me on his speed dial,” she says, “Thinks I’m his sidekick or some shit. I tried explaining to him that just because I wear spandex and can do acrobatics doesn’t make me Robin, but he’s not great at listening.”

The three men look at each other, but it’s Tony who speaks first.

“Spiderman called you for help?”

“You know who he is,” Steve realizes.

“Yep,” she says, “and before any of you ask, no, I’m not telling you. If he wanted his identity to be public, he wouldn’t be wearing a mask. And no, you can’t recruit him to your team. He’s too young.”

“Why didn’t you call us?” Steve asks. “We could’ve helped.”

“I didn’t need help.”

Tony sucks in a sharp breath. “We saw the footage,” he says, fists clenched at his sides. “You got flung around like - You didn’t think someone who could  _ fly _ might be some help while you were having your rooftop showdown?”

“Not my first rooftop showdown,” she says, just to watch him flinch.

“You didn’t have to do it alone,” Bruce says.

What is this - some kind of intervention? “I wasn’t alone. I had Spiderman. And I had SHIELD, you know, that organization I work for?”

“And where were they when you were dangling from a skyscraper with nothing but a hook through a mutated lizard keeping you from plummeting to your death?” Tony demands.

Clara jabs the call nurse button.

In an instant, Natasha glides into the room.

“I’m tired,” Clara says.

Natasha’s smile is dangerous as she motions towards the door. “Gentlemen.”

Tony glares at Clara as he leaves, like he’s mad she doesn’t appreciate the great sacrifice he made coming down here to scold her. Steve holds her gaze for a moment, like he’s waiting for her to call him back. Bruce is the only one who doesn’t leave right away, who comes towards Clara instead of away.

“We didn’t come to upset you,” he says, touching Clara’s hand. “Sorry.”

She genuinely likes Bruce, so she doesn’t pull her hand away. She doesn’t say anything either, and after a moment, Bruce takes that as his cue and leaves.

“They’re right,” Natasha says, once it’s just her and Clara in the room.

“Do I need to throw you out, too?” Clara asks.

She’s too tired for this. Or maybe she’s just getting too old to be flung around rooftops and then pop back up like nothing happened. Woodcock’s been a field agent forever, but he’s a sniper in the true sense - just shows up somewhere and shoots - he doesn’t do all the extra stuff Clara does.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a desk job.

She tries to imagine herself as Coulson, sitting behind a big desk with stacks of paperwork and laughs.

Nah, she’s an active field agent until she dies.

“You’re taking risks,” Natasha says.

Clara rolls her eyes. “Part of the job description.”

“Unnecessary ones,” Natasha snaps, and she’s always controlled, which means she wants Clara to know she’s unhappy.

Clara doesn’t care. “No one’s complained before.”

“I haven’t been around,” Natasha says. 

And that’s been half the problem, Clara thinks, but she doesn’t voice it. Natasha was on an important mission, and Clara can’t expect that she and Natasha will be paired all the time. She needs to be able to work independently. She thought she’d done a pretty good job showing she could at Oscorp, but you get a couple of bruises and suddenly everyone thinks you need a  _ team _ .

Clara doesn’t need anything but Coulson in her ear and backup in case things goes to shit.

“But I’m back,” Natasha says, “and I know what you’re doing.”

“My job?”

Natasha’s glare makes Clara shut her mouth. Apparently Natasha’s in serious mode.

“Remember when I let you find me?” Natasha asks.

Of course Clara remembers. She was sent as backup to Woodcock, as if two snipers were going to be able to take out someone like the Black Widow. Only, what SHIELD hadn’t counted on, was that the Black Widow  _ wanted _ to be taken out.

And - no. “It’s not the same,” Clara says. “I’m fighting.”

“And if you happen to die in the process, not a big deal?” Natasha asks, as brutal with her words as she is with her fists or her knives.

Clara wants to pull her blanket up over her head and hide. That’s not what she’s doing. She’s doing her job. She’s an agent of SHIELD until the day she dies and  _ no _ , she’s not looking for death. She didn’t have a choice but to engage at Oscorp. She couldn’t let Dr. Connors infect the whole city, and she wasn’t going to let Captain Stacy or Peter get hurt because they were facing something they didn’t know how to deal with.

Clara’s a SHIELD agent because she knows what to do with weird, because she’s able to react to the unexpected and find a way to take care of it. And  _ she did _ . Why has everyone that’s come to lecture her forgotten that? It’s not like she took a swan dive off the top of Oscorp tower.  _ She had a plan and it worked _ .

“I owe SHIELD everything,” Clara says through gritted teeth.

“That doesn’t mean they should take it,” Natasha says, all hard edges, none of the softness she sometimes lets Clara see. This is Natasha at her most dangerous, and Clara doesn’t know how to react. “Maybe you should find someone who has your best interests in mind.”

“Get. Out.”

Clara’s never understood the phrase ‘seeing red’ until now. Until she can imagine lashing out, until she can see blood trickling down Natasha’s face, until the red of her blood mixes with the red of her hair and there’s no telling it apart.

Clara’s hands curls into her sheets, and she wishes she had a knife or a scalpel, something with an edge that can take the edge off her anger. Something solid, that reminds her who she is, where she is,  _ what  _ she is.

“Clara,” Natasha begins.

Clara loses any ability to use words and just  _ screams _ , not caring if it means she’s going to have to spend an extra week here or that they’re going to inject her with something or that Dr. Fucking Suresh is probably going to be sitting next to her bed next time she wakes up.

Natasha’s supposed to be on her side, supposed to be the one person Clara can count on. She -

Clara doesn’t notice when Natasha leaves, and she barely notices the prick in her arm that means she’s being sedated.

~*~

It’s Coulson who’s next to her bed when she wakes up, fuzzy-headed, fuzzy-mouthed, and he hands her a cup of water.

“Thanks,” she says. “Have to say, you’re not who I expected.”

“The doctors agreed it was too many visitors at once,” Coulson says. “Did you feel overwhelmed?”

She screamed until she was sedated. “What do you think?”

It’s the wrong question, because Coulson turns his full, serious, attention on her. “I think you’re in a period of transition, and you don’t know what to do about it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Clara says. “How many times do I have to say it before everyone believes me?”

She thinks it would be easier to have this conversation if she wasn’t in a floral hospital gown, if she wasn’t stuck in a hospital bed. She wants her catsuit, or even just one of her SHIELD t-shirts. She wants the reminder of who she belongs to, not for herself - she knows - but for everyone else who thinks she’d abandon SHIELD after all it’s done for her.

Like you abandoned your parents?

Like you abandoned Barney?

She covers her ears even though she can’t block out the voices in her head. This is different. Her parents didn’t protect her. Barney didn’t either. She left because it was the best choice for her, because she  _ had _ to. SHIELD’s never betrayed her the way her dad did, the way Barney and Trick did. 

She looks over at Coulson, and there’s a crack in his agent face, there’s actual emotion in his eyes - worry, concern, something deeper - and Clara forces her hands down to her sides, because she doesn’t want to be sedated again. 

“You recruited me,” she says, letting the accusation and betrayal lash out at him, because how dare Coulson, of everyone that’s come to her, try to tell her SHIELD isn’t right for her. He’s the one who brought her here. 

“I did,” Coulson agrees, careful, and Clara’s hands clench into fists because this is Coulson  _ handling _ her. “You’re not the same person you were when I recruited you. I just want you to consider the thought that SHIELD might not be the best fit for you anymore.”

Clara’s blood runs cold. This is worse than running away from her parents or the circus. This is SHIELD trying to run away from  _ her _ .

“You’re kicking me out?” she asks, and she hates how shaky her voice is, how  _ young _ she sounds. 

“No,” Coulson promises, sound, sure, and she’s able to relax a little bit. “But I want you to know that you have my permission and my blessing if you want to transfer to a different organization.”

The Avengers is what he means, but he doesn’t say. 

Clara shakes her head. “SHIELD gave me everything.”

“No,” Coulson says, “SHIELD gave you an opportunity. You were already amazing when I found you, I just gave you a chance to apply all the skills you had.”

She shakes her head. Not amazing. Just a girl with a bow. Just practice. Just -

“Your loyalty and service to SHIELD has been exemplary,” Coulson tells her, “and if you want to keep working for SHIELD, no one’s going to force you out. But SHIELD isn’t your only option anymore.”

“You told me,” there’s a lump in her throat that’s difficult to swallow around, “you told me in the diner that SHIELD wasn’t my only option then either. But the others - I would do things I didn’t want to do or I’d end up on SHIELD’s hitlist.”

“Still true,” Coulson says, “There are definitely people who would love to have your skills, who would use you to kill, to do things SHIELD doesn’t approve of. But there are definitely people who wouldn't do that. You have a choice now, and if you stay with SHIELD then that will be your true choice.”

“It was my choice the first time,” Clara says.

“I -” Coulson looks away from her for a moment before he meets her gaze again, determined, “I found you living on the streets, struggling to find enough food to eat. It wasn’t a fair choice. Yes, it was a choice you got to make, but it wasn’t a fair one. This time, it will be.”

“SHIELD’s all I’ve ever really known,” she says.

“I know,” Coulson tells her, “but it doesn’t have to be that way. And if you do join the Avengers - no pressure from me either way - you know people there, too. You’ve worked with Tony, you’ve befriended Bruce, you’ve lived with Steve. They won’t be strangers to you. And, of course, I’ll still be working closely with you.”

He hesitates, and Clara picks up on it immediately.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He looks for a moment like he isn’t going to tell her, but then he says, “And Natasha has transferred from agent of SHIELD to member of the Avengers.”

Fuck.

Clara drags a hand down her face. She’s lost Natasha to the Avengers too? She tries to get angry, tries to feel betrayed, but there’s nothing. She knew this was going to happen. Natasha told her from the very beginning, from when Clara first found her, that SHIELD was a better option than running from the Red Room on her own, but one day she was going to find something better and she was going to leave.

Clara had been naive to think Natasha wouldn’t find something better, naive to think that SHIELD could always be the best option.

“There’s talk that Sam Wilson might join as well,” Coulson says.

Clara shakes her head. “How come Fury hasn’t come and killed me yet? They - I know everyone in the Avengers. I -”

“You brought them together,” Coulson says. “I told the Director you should get a commendation, but he’s too busy pouting that the Avengers don’t want to be under direct SHIELD control.”

“Commendation?” Clara repeats, because - what?

“You assembled the Avengers,” Coulson says. “After Stark laughed in Fury’s face after the Stane showdown, we thought the Avengers Initiative was going to have to be abandoned. Stark - well, he doesn’t exactly play nice with others. But you found him Bruce, and when Stark and Captain Rogers began working together - we realized you’d done something special.”

Nothing special about her.

Nothing -

She shakes her head to clear it.

“I screwed up,” she says. “I screwed everything up. I got suspended. I lost Captain America. I -”

“You accomplished the goal in a non-standard way,” Coulson says. 

He makes it sound so simple, so  _ easy _ . It can’t be that easy. It can’t. 

“No one told me that was my mission,” she says. 

“Transparency is not one of SHIELD’s strengths,” Coulson says. “I hear that Captain Rogers is going to make it one of the central tenets of the Avengers.”

Clara forces herself to laugh, because it’s either that or fall apart. “They send you to recruit me, sir?”

“I did a pretty good job the first time,” Coulson says, and there’s a small smile on his face. “But I meant what I said earlier. This is your choice. SHIELD, the Avengers, buy an apartment building and retire from this life altogether - whatever you want to do. And I’ll support you no matter what choice you make.”

_ I won’t abandon you _ is what he’s saying.

Tears prickle in the corner of Clara’s eyes. “When do I have to decide?”

“Take all the time you need,” Coulson says. 

“Okay,” Clara says. “Will you - will you stay with me for a bit?”

“Of course,” Coulson says. “You want the TV on?”

She shakes her head. “I just want to sit. Is that okay?”

He moves his chair closer so he can hold his hand out to her. She clasps it in one of hers and smiles, before leaning back against her pillows and closing her eyes.

~*~

Someone must’ve told Natasha when Clara got released from medical, because Natasha’s in Clara’s room when Clara gets there.

“Surprised you’re still on base,” Clara says.

“Visit,” Natasha says.

Clara’s duffel bag is on Clara’s bed, empty, but she hadn’t left it there. Which means Natasha put it there.

“I told you that one day I was going to leave SHIELD,” Natasha says.

“I know,” Clara says, because she does, “I don’t blame you. You found something better.”

Natasha makes an irritated sound. “You remember the second part of what I told you?”

“That you would ask if I wanted to come with you.”

Natasha looks at the duffel bag. “This is me asking.”

“Thank you,” Clara says. 

“I made a promise,” Natasha says.

“I need to think about it,” Clara says, and Natasha’s face doesn’t betray any of what she’s feeling. “It’s a big decision. Coulson thinks I should. I mean, I think he does? He was trying to be neutral.”

“It should be your choice,” Natasha agrees. “And I will be your friend whether we work together or not.”

Clara decides not to push her luck by giving Natasha a hug. “Weekly lunch dates now that you’re back?”

“Of course.”

Clara grins and puts her duffel bag back in her closet. She meant what she told Natasha, she needs to think about what she’s doing with her life now, and it’s not going to be a decision she makes lightly. But knowing that Coulson and Natasha have her back no matter what she chooses - it means she can actually consider her options instead of just sticking with SHIELD.

~*~

She spends two weeks getting back into shape and pestering Coulson for extra time at the shooting range, but “It’s still three hours,” he tells her and then “It’ll be the same with the Avengers” like she’d choose where she worked based on how long she was allowed to be in the shooting range.

...okay, maybe Coulson knows her well, but that would be a  _ consideration _ not a deciding factor.

Anyways, two weeks after her release from medical, she gets sent on a mission. 

Sitwell’s her handler, because Coulson’s working almost exclusively with the Avengers, but that’s okay, because Clara likes Sitwell. And she gets teamed up with Mariah and Madison again, and they’ve got Mason in their ears, because she’s running things from SHIELD.

“Standard protection detail,” Sitwell says. “Dr. Tarasenko’s been keeping us apprised of what some of his less ethical coworkers are doing with radiation, but they’ve found out that he’s been leaking information, and they’re not pleased.”

“Hasn’t anyone learned that radiation is bad news?” Clara asks. 

“They want bad news,” Sitwell says. “Believe it or not, they’re trying to recreate the supersoldier serum.”

“Fucking hell,” Mariah says. 

“Guess we did too good a job keeping the Hulk’s origins under wrap,” Clara says.

“Or the opposite,” Madison says. “Maybe Russia wants an army of Hulks.”

“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Sitwell says. “We need to get Dr. Tarasenko from the safe house to our transport. Barton, you’re going to be our eyes up high. Madison, Mariah, you’re going to be with the target. Full body armor for everyone. This isn’t a secret anymore, it’s an extraction.”

“Dr. Tarasenko’s cooperating fully?” Clara asks.

“Yes. He’s very invested in staying alive. And we might have promised him a meeting with Dr. Banner.”

“I’m not the one telling Bruce,” Clara says as she flips through the rest of the mission briefing.

The mission goes well, or, as well as a mission can go when someone’s trying to kill the person you’re protecting. Several someones at that.

Clara picks off the first wave of attackers, but they must have been a diversion or there specifically so the next wave knew where Clara’s position was, because she gets shot out of her nest and during the ensuing chase gets knocked off a three story building and wrecks her ankle. She’s hoping it’s just a sprain, but it means she’s grounded, and Tony’s words flit through her head - you didn’t think someone who could  _ fly _ might be some help - and she pushes them aside to think about later.

Later turns out to be when she’s climbing up the rope SHIELD’s tossed her, because they can’t land the helicopter near her location, and she can’t limp to an extraction point fast enough. She’s climbing up the rope with just her arms, and there are people  _ shooting  _ at her, and Mariah’s shooting back from the ‘copter, but Clara’s definitely feeling the need to have a teammate who can fly into small spaces to prevent her from falling off rooftops.

Madison hauls her into the helicopter once Clara’s near enough to the top, and they speed away before Clara’s even buckled into her seat. 

Dr. Tarasenko’s in the seat next to her, much younger than she thought he’d be, with a silver briefcase on his lap.

“Yo,” Clara says and then throws her leg over his lap so she can get her ankle elevated.

He starts to protest, and she cuts him a hard look.

“Who just saved your life?” she asks, and he shuts up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Stop terrorizing Dr. Tarasenko,” Sitwell says from the other side of the helicopter.

Clara throws off a salute, but she doesn’t take her foot off Dr. Tarasenko’s lap.

~*~

It’s just a sprain, but she wears an air cast to appease medical, and goes straight to Coulson’s office once she’s cleared to leave.

“So,” Clara says, dropping onto his couch. “Dr. Tarasenko.”

“You don’t debrief with me,” Coulson reminds her, filling out what looks like a request form.

She wants to peek, see what it’s for, but that would require too much moving.

“Not here to debrief,” she says. “You remember the diner?”

Coulson looks over at the placemat drawing he still has framed on the wall.

“Ugh,” Clara says, but she doesn’t let herself get distracted. “I asked you why you do what you do.”

“You did,” Coulson agrees. He stops writing and gives her his full attention.

“You said because you wanted to help people. That sometimes it’s one person like Dr. Tarasenko or a bunch of people like when we kept the native villages from being terrorized by poisonous dolphins or piranha frogs, but you also said that sometimes you save the world.”

“I believe you laughed at the notion that you might one day save the world,” Coulson says.

“The Avengers - that’s the kind of thing they’re going to be doing,” Clara says. “Big scale stuff.”

“Yes,” Coulson says. “They might split into smaller groups for smaller stuff, but their primary responsibility will be the things too big for human agencies to deal with.”

Clara thinks that over. It’ll be more like mutated lizards than protection details, and it’s not like protecting Dr. Tarasenko wasn’t important, but there are lots of SHIELD agents who have the training and the ability to do that. And, maybe this is egotistical of her, but she’s not sure how many of those agents could contribute to a team like the Avengers the way she could.

“You, uh,” Clara looks around the room that she basically grew up in - learning to read, learning that she wasn’t alone, that there was one person in the world who’d always have her back - “You have the time to write me a letter of recommendation?” 

Coulson doesn’t try to hide his smile. “It would be an honor.”

~*~

Clara waits until she’s out of the air cast to stroll into Tony’s New York mansion, envelope with Coulson’s recommendation clutched in her hand. She doesn’t actually think she’ll need it, it was kind of a joke when she asked Coulson for it, but Coulson wrote it for her, and it gives her the confidence to keep going when Jarvis gives her a surprised, “Hello, Hawkeye. Would you like know where the others are?”

She does want to know where they are, and she wants to know if they want her, but she’d like to know that without having to ask, without having to put herself out there and risk being rejected. 

The envelope in her hand is soft with sweat where her palm’s wet, but it’s a good reminder. Coulson wouldn’t’ve told her to come if he didn’t think she was a good fit. He wouldn’t have written things like  _ my best recruit _ and  _ I recommend Clara Barton for this position without reservation  _ if he didn’t mean them. 

She follows Jarvis’s directions until she finds the whole team - Tony, Steve, Bruce, Natasha, and Sam - lounging in the living room. They appear to be watching one of the old animated Captain America cartoons, and Steve’s face is bright red.

Clara clears her throat.

Steve would probably welcome a HYDRA invasion if it meant not having to keep watching, but he does look happy to see her. Bruce smiles, and Tony looks surprised. Natasha just looks smug, and Sam gives her a little wave.

“So,” she says, “There an interview or something?”

“Ha,” Tony says.

“He’s already designed an entire set of rooms for you,” Natasha says. “I think you can probably skip the interview.”

“References?” Clara asks, fighting her smile. “I’m sure Fury would love to tell you about the time I lost a Norse god.”

“I still haven’t heard that story,” Natasha says.

“Not one of my finer moments. Why don’t I tell you about finding Bruce Banner? Highlight of the story was getting to punch Tony in the face.”

Tony pouts while Steve laughs. “That sounds like it’ll be a good one,” Steve says. “Come in and tell us about it.”

Clara tucks her letter from Coulson into one of the pockets in her cargo pants and comes to join them on the couches.

~*~

“Do we really need a team picture?” Bruce asks, trying to disappear as Steve and Tony jostle him around, trying to get into position.

Tony keeps trying to stand on his tiptoes or brace himself on Bruce and Clara’s shoulders so he can jump and get closer to Steve’s height. 

“I should’ve worn the suit,” Tony grumbles.

“Overcompensation,” Clara coughs, clear enough that Tony definitely hears.

Tony glares at her, but there’s no real heat behind it.

“Could you guys hold still?” Peter asks, frowning as he tries to get his tripod set up so he can get all of them and the mansion in the shot. “You’re worse than the prom photos I do.”

“You do prom photos?” Tony asks.

“Gotta make money somehow,” Peter says, “and Iron Man’s armor’s got this weird reflection thing that ruins all the pictures I take now.”

Tony grins, unapologetic. “You never take good pictures of me.”

Peter grumbles a bit more before he says, “Alright, all set up. You ready?”

His shoulders sag a little, disappointed at how close he is to the team because he’s not quite close enough. And Clara, the one who put her foot down on Peter joining the team, the one who said they had to wait until he was older, until he could make an informed choice, she waves him over.

“Set it on a timer and get your skinny ass over here,” she says.

Peter’s mouth drops. “Yeah?”

“You’re gonna be one of us soon enough,” she says. As soon as word got out that she’d joined the Avengers, Peter had started lobbying her to get him an invite too. He even told the rest of the team about his alter ego, and he managed to sway everyone but Clara. Steve had been surprisingly insistent - pointed out that he’d just been a kid when he started getting the shit beat out of him and that he never would’ve made it far without Bucky. Clara agrees that teams are important. She just also thinks that Peter should get a chance to be a kid before they turn him into a full-time superhero.

Peter grins and fiddles with his camera before bounding over and slipping between Steve and Natasha. Three seconds later, the camera goes off, a series of clicks that takes a few seconds to stop.

“One of those should be good,” Peter says, going back to his camera. 

“You can set it to automatically take a bunch of pictures?” Tony asks.

Peter waves a hand as he studies the pictures he just took. “I like to improve electronics in my free time.”

That night, Peter sends them all a digital copy of the picture he deemed best. Tony gets a large print made and hangs it opposite the TV in the living room. Clara prints out a smaller copy and tucks it into the pages of  _ Greater New England Fish & Wildlife _ . It’s the first picture she has with people in it. The first picture she has with  _ her _ in it, standing not in front of a place she wants to be home but that is home.

It goes right after the pages where she’s stored Coulson’s letter of recommendation.

~*~

“Alright,” Tony says, once they’ve gotten a second picture, this one of them in their costumes. “We’re a superhero team. That means names. Obviously, I’m Iron Man. We’ve got Cap over there and the Hulk. What about the rest of you?”

“Falcon,” Sam says.

“Black Widow,” Natasha says, and Clara’s a little surprised that she’s buying into the whole costume and name thing. But her costume is a variation on her SHIELD catsuit, sleek black spandex with enough belts and pockets to stash her Widow’s Bite, a couple knives and other fun toys.

Everyone turns to Clara.

“Hawkeye,” Tony says, “Obviously. Two bird names but what can you do?”

“Excuse me,” Clara says. She’s almost thirty years old, and she’s still the archer that never misses, but she’s the archer who never misses and rarely kills people, the archer who never misses and is part of a  _ superhero  _ team that’s gonna save the world. “It’s the _ Amazing _ Hawkeye.”


End file.
